Well you just confirmed what I said earlier - combining mutual understanding of the limits together with keeping things thrilling is a delicate finesse.
I just think more of these authors get it right than people give them credit for. MRL, for one, I never expected to go anywhere other than sharing. But people will always find a way to freak out. I mean, early days, there was the hobo blowjob scene, but since it was optional, people freaked out about the policeman scene instead. Damn, I mean, it WAS escalation, but that's what made it good, it was impromptu and a perverted scheme to get out of trouble with law enforcement. And they both enjoyed it afterwards. But people were offended, even then, because it was HER initiative. Fuck that.
Having said that, maybe authors aren't doing a perfect job managing expectations. I like these "sudden escalations" and other surprises, when you have enough context to be able to read them in light of what you're told about the characters. But closing an update with a cliffhanger on such a "surprise" will naturally get some people puzzled, some upset, some going into a rage, because there IS an open question and the resolution is left for a future episode. The fun an author may have in playing with reader expectations easily backfires when many in the "mature games" audience aren't mature enough to manage their own expectations
And it snowballs. Soon the author is in damage control mode and a good story is fucked up because of bad timing.
You are saying this because, as you said earlier, you always go for the hardest sharing options to see maximum of the content. I, on the other hand, always try to keep things "on the edge" - I want to see maximum teasing without actual sex. So for you her suddenly sucking him off is not a problem, but I wanted my first playthrough to be "a pure love" route, but with getting as much teasing as possible.
I can see your point, but a "pure teasing" full playthrough might be a tall order, though legitimate. Would probably be easier to find a vanilla game that flirts with non-vanilla themes, without quite going there, than a sharing game that includes teasing, but not more than that, in their pure love route. My assumption is that pure love routes are geared towards players who don't enjoy non-vanilla content and authors that include them go out of their way to remove even the slightest suggestion of "offensive" content.
Final edit: when I say I go for the "hardest sharing", I just mean I go for anything that could pass as sharing between two confident, liberated, loving partners, including when one of them takes the initiative without prior consulting, as long as the obvious tension resolves immediately after. I don't enjoy prolonged tension, mystery about the partner's true intentions, or any sort of lying, deflecting or omitting stuff that should obviously be talked about between partners, especially about something that already happened. In other words, the perfect, happy, confident, assertive couple that never fights. Honestly, I don't know who's order is tallest
But when real life is so full of shit, one can only fantasise
