The numbers themselves were referring to the poll results, although I did state it in such a way as to attribute it to the whole population. But well, that's basically sampling and in a non-scientifically rigorous environment of a porn piracy forum, I just made the assumption that the sample represents the whole.
But this is definitely enough sample size to be reasonably confident about the conclusions, when we consider the population of people on F95zone that visits the off-topic section, and can be bothered to click a choice in a POLL, especially if that conclusion is basically, "not everyone self-inserts in general for porn games and and the percentage is even lower for NTR fans."
Also, this result is not different from other people's polls of similar nature asking if people self-insert or not.
I don't dispute, again, the conclusion about less NTR fans self-inserting than in vanilla genres, or about there being people who don't self-insert (lol, duh). And for poll voters in general discussion and offtopic, yeah it could be pretty accurate.
But it was to underline I just don't think the poll results represent the whole of active users. As another example take polls about male or female protagonists like:
https://f95zone.to/threads/male-or-female-protagonist.47712/
https://f95zone.to/threads/female-protagonist-vs-male-protagonist.23832/
These show a slight preference for female protagonist, I think I saw some others that were almost 50 50. But any evidence for the actually popular games suggests that male MCs are way more popular. GGGB and AWAM are exceptions.
This is valid, lmao. It's very reductionist, but your breakdown of the netorare structure is correct. And I can see why someone might get bored of it. That said, you can make the same reductionist interpretation of any genre. Oh, romance is so boring, we already know MC will end up with a wholesome releationship wtih one of the LIs. Oh, harem is so boring, we know this gigachad MC will bang all women who throw themselves at him. Saimin hypnosis whatever is so boring, we know the MC has cheat powers and he will abuse it to bang everything.
That hypothetical reductionist interpretation could be done for other genres, but it misses a few structural differences. One is that the NTR genre is about an arc, while romance (wholesome or not) or harem are about endings tho that usually
implies an arc.
Sanguine Rose is an unvanilla game with harem endings without any harem arcs, to give an unusual example. The expectation of an arc creates more constraints compared to an expectation of endings, tho most romance/harem games rehash a lot of tropes. The other more important difference is that the average plot structure's different between netorare and a significant share of romance and harem games. Many romance/harem games have a dual plot where the main plot is more story-driven while the romantic plot is secondary, while in most NTR games the NTR plot is central but it maybe have a subordinate story hook.
Aisling and the Tavern of Elves is a romance example where the romance plot is so underdeveloped it feels like a last minute add on, while the quirky narrative plot (fantasy comedy with many historical details) carries the whole VN.
Eternum and Talothral's games are more mainstream examples of this plot structure with very different implementations.
I think that second structural difference matches audience expectation. A common point from many NTR fans (and netorase fans too) is that they see their fav genre as pretty much porn, tho they aren't exactly the type that insist non-porn adult games are pretentious. A lot of vanilla harem fans, especially purists, see AVNs as distinct from porn, but they aren't in the story-first non-porny adult stories camp either. It should in theory be possible to combine an NTR arc with a psychological thriller plot, I mean the ingredients are there, but the question is who it'd be for.
Of course the other details you mentioned in the rest matter too in their own way, and can make a story more unique.
