I don't shy away from complexity, the only problem is the most mechanically complex games are text-based or text-only (e.g. Lilith's Throne, Corrupted Saviors).
It's difficult to make it fit otherwise.
When I look at the choices, what I see is:
- A global story where as player you're nothing ;
- A kinetic story that will advance if you're good enough at playing ;
- A Story that evolve based on your decision ;
- No story at all ;
- All of the above fit.
And the same apply for the adult games we can effectively found on the scene. Those that effectively looks like games have no real story or a story you've absolutely no control over. While those who have a story have limited game mechanisms. And in between there's some text based games, because it's the only way to deal with the thousands of possibilities that you'll reach after playing it long enough.
You can't make a game like Devil May Cry where the player have a real influence over the story. It would mean that you've "levels" that will never be played, because the player decided to not follow this route. At the end of the game, you would have played less than 30% of those "levels", and there's no one ready to pass time designing and coding "levels" that will perhaps never be played by anyone.
Even with "regular games" there isn't such games. The most we can have is something likes Dishonored. Your choices as player only influence the atmosphere of the story and the way the AI will react ; plus some NPC that exist or not. Going further than that would need way too much works even for an AAA studio.
Or you've something like Mass Effect, where some characters can be alive or not, but here again the effect is limited and, globally speaking, it's like for Dishonored, the real difference will only be the way the story will end.
But it's not what the majority want on the scene. Either players want to fap, and therefore the game mechanisms don't interest them at all, or they want to have the control of the story. It's a minority who want an effective game ; and most of them will prefer to play a modded Fallout or Elder Scrolls, because they are better.
Not that there isn't players interested by an effective game with an effective gameplay from start to stop,
Sakura Dungeon is the proof that they exist and are numerous. But it's mostly because it's the sole game like this on the scene. We play it like we would play an old generation Japanese H-Game, those JRPG from the 80's/90's with some lewd art in between the RPG parts ; it's a "regular game" with a bit of lewd that make it a bit more entertaining.
