@Faerin : I'm glad to see you here, communication is important. Also, I want you to know that while many here are not willing to spend money, this kind of forum will bring you basically free advertisement around the net, and many people will decide to support you if, after having tried it, they think that you're doing a good job and don't slack.
Since we come from some bad days from the POV of patreon releases, with other big games that delivered very little and/or very poorly, I want to summarize here what I think about game development. I hope it'll help you to avoid mistakes that seems to help you, but they do it only in the short run, while damaging you on the long run:
1-
if you plan to change the appearance of the characters, do it now. The more you will go ahead with the story, the more you will have to give to the player the chance to have a deep connection with te characters. This doesn't mean to allow him to do more dirty actions, it means to build a consistent lore around the character, to make it feel real. You can decide that you want to make a game about just sex if you want, but it doesn't matter, characters have to be believable and feel real, so choose now their appearance and stick with it. Don't change it when you'll be already well ahead with the develpement, otherwise you'll break this immersion at the following update and also you'll have to redo many scenes.
2-
don't let the playerbase influence your game's story. We pay, we play. That's it. Big brother is the brightest example of how to let other people ruin your game. Run polls on the cloth styles if you want. Give to higher patreons early releases, 4k CGs .rar packs, anything but the chance to change your story. The writing must be set in stone unless they tell you that something doesn't make sense, and, even then, it's up to you to decide how to change it.
3-
build your game to be modded if possible. Look at the TES saga, the new XCOM saga, the STALKER saga and many other games: I, myself, translated mega mods that came out even more than a decade after the game. That, I'm sure, is the proof of what people do when they think a game that's already really good but could be even awesome. If you want to integrate those people into your team is up to you. Think about the possibilities!
4- If you can make well animated h-scenes they're a
BIG plus that will make your game skyrocket. An example: saltyicecream. The guy takes a month or more to make a single gif, but it's often so god-tier that you can just ask for more.
5-
don't slack. If you feel that you can't deliver anything worthy of the people's money, suspend the payments for that month, explain the situation to you patreons and, if you're not sure about when you'll be able to get back on it, DON'T give any date. We lost count of the broken promises and never delivered builds. Also, the money you get is yours to spend how you want and people will bitch about it only if it's a lot and they don't get enough in return: don't mind them, they often are the same people that don't patronize anybody at all and/or don't have any idea of how much work and money it takes to make a game. Just do your part.
I'm getting sleepy, so this is all. I hope it helps you. You can read about critics specific to your game in the rest of the thread, so there's no need to talk about them here. I wish you good luck with your project.