I’ve been feeling this way for a while now. That being said, this conversation system is a necessary space waster, as I realized here. But at the same time, for as large as they’ve grown, and with how they’ve really stagnated in comparison when it comes to overall development, I worry your thoughts may be the case. Honestly, I can’t do anything about it except sit and hope. But when half of the promised features are no longer part of the planned development, as well as other objects that are already done just sit in code, it doesn’t make you feel warm and fuzzy.
To add to this a little, if you ever watch the dev streams, they really give the vibe that the old team and path are out the window, and a new team has taken over, trying to play catch up with their own ideas.
You’re right that it’s not a copy and paste system, but at the same time, it’s not very deep either. As it stands, it’s all random equation of Pick emotion, add the picture of an object, pick end emotion. There’s no personality to it, and thus there’s no life to the Hearthlings. Unless this system adds to a bigger build and goes somewhere, it’s not really that big of a feat.
According to the stream tonight and a couple nights ago, the Kickstarter Pets are in there, but aren’t planned for release until the very end. Otherwise, the rest is “on the roadmap” (which feels like a copout statement anymore).