Yeah bro Alice could have been a better source of jealousy for asuna this game wonder why she's fallen to the hypnosis route fujino sensei seems to be eyeing the doubting asuna type sht anyways maybe he replaced Alice's role to leafa because sugu is somewhat a main side character as well
I mean, Fujino mainly did so because he made this game as an AU for early-timeline-SAO XD Alice's character is only as she is because of the events of Alicization, without it happening even remotely at all in this NTR-verse, Fujino had to basically make her an OC with Alice's face and name, which while making sense "setting-wise" is most definitively NOT what people who voted for her wanted, even though when they did so none of them probably even entertained the idea of HOW would Fujino introduce her into the plot XP So we ended up with the Alice-expy we got that had none of the charm and barely any of the personality of Canon Alice, and Fujino decided to turn her plot's direction the most further away from Kirito for ease of writing, which just made people even less interested in her in general :O
Also, lmao, as someone who prefers Sugu over Alice, is very sad seeing someone call her "a main side character" when she was literally one of the main heroines and had her own arc, it really shows how not being as popular as the other main heroines makes people really overlook her character.