My read of that response leans heavily toward half-hearted pseudoimplementation as the most likely form for it.
"We don't think it matters that much and if people want it that bad then whatever" sounds to me like they're not planning on heavily supporting it or going back to change any old scenes, that sticking a parser in and calling it a day is about all the thought they'd put into it, so it's truly a move that would please no one.
I didn't say that at all. I said these arguments (that assume/disregard LOE and also assume what our priorities are by misreading or hyperextrapolating from things we have said or just completely guessing) aren't good.
At some point, we'll be done with all of the high priority items for ToA, and any size feature request can be accommodated, because our budget and support timeline are not fixed. As long as people
want those things, and we're willing to do them, they can be done. And we'll be making those decisions based on our own informed understanding of the LOE, not generic appeals to LOE that try to game theory their way to their preferred outcome (ie "don't add this feature I don't like because it's literally impossible to add it in a way that will 'please everyone'" or will "please no one", which assumes, of course, that we want to please absolutely everyone with every feature we implement).
As more misinterpretation fodder: the original vision for the game includes variable character attitude and self-identification. Things like feminization, increased promiscuity, becoming more confident sexually, etc. The reason that the Catamite perk exists, for instance, is so that a player can skip the part where their character is reluctant to venture outside their heroic duties. The reason variable pronoun ID didn't exist to begin with is because of a conflict between the self-feminization and forced-feminization fetishes, that is, whether pronouns would be based on player selection or chosen by a character's level of feminization. And it wasn't a big deal since, after all, mostly the player character is referred to in the second person, "you", which is gender neutral, with most mentions of gender not being pronoun based, but gender ID based (the narrative assumes that Hiro is male, which is also not something that was ever planned to be set in stone! See: feminization).
I delayed making that choice until it became clear that I wasn't going to add that kind of forced feminization generically to the game, instead confining it to certain characters (like Alma), which meant that pronoun selection could be made by the player generically instead (which could, potentially, be affected by the forced feminization content, which the player would be able to moderate their interaction with). So it became a feature that could be voted on and, if selected, prioritized. At this point, even if it's voted on, it's going into the backlog for post-release.
So let me be clear about that again: the decision to add it to the feature survey was not made based on a public appeals campaign. It was something people wanted, and based on the way development was unfolding, we decided it was a feasible addition to make. We're well aware of the phenomenon of people getting something they want, and then asking for more, and we're used to managing it.
tl;dr "But I don't WANT that feature added" and its derivatives are not ever going to be convincing if someone else (particularly the devs!) does want it. People can say what things they
do want and we'll accept, reject, and prioritize them accordingly, based on LOE, game design, and target audience factors.
