well it's not really irrelevant is it? Given that the success will depend on sales of the game only then will the dev know if it was successful or not.
There are the little side plots, and the main overarching storyline. It's easy to see how confusing it can be. Basically I suspose the best way of saying this is, that it feels more or less like a very small star trek novella each time they go somewhere, with the overaching story over the top of those smaller novella-type stories.
I think the dev got it about right given how big this project is going to be, he would have to break it up. People are able to play these small stories in one sitting, rather than trying to complete the whole storyline in one go. I understand where your coming from with you saying there is no story or very little story etc, but there is a storyline, with plenty of seperate stories built in, which feed into the main storyline.
I quite enjoy how he has managed to do this. I quite like the concept. SL is capable of being played in 1 sit through time permitting for the person. This project is on altogether massive scale compared to that. I quite enjoy the storyline and the little plots here and there and the smaller stories. I mean they are hadly james blish or Frank Herbert or any of the top sci fi writers, but thats not what matters really here. I think there is going to be some massive changes in the way the game will play out in the future. I dont think your going to get any AAA games producer going out their way to make a VN or AVN with much of storyline or if ever anyway, since they aren't exactly main stream or good for business given the top shelf billing they have been given due to their adult xxx nature.
its just a jaunt through space, even with or without much of a storyline. I am more interested in character development, and relationship dynamics, and as crazy as it might sound, to me the story comes last. I want to see how this harem for the mc will work out. I have played plenty of vn's that are harem based and many of them are very poor, boringly written, their characters are more of paradoy than anything else. However here they are not.