Gave it yesterday a first try, here my feedback:
I sadly have to agree with the complaints about your design choice. If you aren't aware of it, the trigger for the actual events looks more like a replay function and not as something to use for progression. And for now the sandbox part feels more like a waste of time for your and also the player. Simply because there is nothing to do. And after skipping through 2 ingame weeks you've seen literally every "scene" of all 4 girls. It's wasted potential and bad design choices alltogether. The lack of variety on the girls was beaten to death already, so I won't my piece of that.
In the end, you do you, but you should listen to people, who are giving honest, fair and constructive feedback, especially if it concerns the gameplay mechanics. Just my opinion of course.
Like you said, I should listen to constructive feedback. And when there will be one, I will do.
I'm well aware that without the girls route, and then, no bonus sex content in the freeroam, it make it a little useless.
But still, if you watched all of the basic interaction, you know more about the characters.
You know that Leane like compliments on her intelligence, that she sucks in a kitchen, you know that the mom is a gamer and farms a lot, that Claire doesn't like studying, that Camille download movies and watches them on her laptop while running, etc...
So yeah, these are not sexual content, sorry to make you all waste your time on that freeroam of Hell, but I think it's still important. It's a daily-life moment with your family.
Maybe you all prefer freeroam where you have to grind like crazy. Well, there is not that thing in this game. You unlock the bonus in the freeroam
after playing the story:
The story has a first part (5 segments), like a giant prologue. This giant prologue will be used in the girls' route (the 3 bastard classmates in Rebecca story, Roger and Annita in Meredith story, Captain Light in her own story, the skeletons and MC's power in, like, every girls' story, etc...), so that giant prologue needs to be.
After that, you will have the girls' route where the relationship between MC and the girl will evolve and will lead to their first sexual experience.
And after that, like if you were the man of that girl, you will be able to repeat the experience with her, after finding her in the freeroam.
And so, no, I don't think it's a bad gameplay design: you are in your house, and there is no option to fuck, because for now, the girls are still "just" your family.
At first, I wanted to put the freeroam after the 5 segments, but I didn't want players to think it would just be a VN, and later, throw a freeroam at their face out of nowhere and pissed them off.
At least, they know there is one since the begining.
But they are still pissed-off because the freeroam is empty, so... fuck my good intention.
People just don't have patience. The game is still young, no sexual content yet.
There will be sexual content in 3 updates (segment 4: no, segment 5: no, first girl's route: yes).
And for the lack of variety of the girls, it's just my personnal choice, I have a lot a girls with dark hairs and dark clothes because it's the style of the game, like the MC and his "dark" powers. You like it or don't.
As it is my personnal choice making the girls look alike because they are from the same family.