The game never focuses on romance, and was never going to make any of the ships an actual thing regardless. Also yes a game designed around releasing new characters from the start, that's successful, will keep releasing new characters, that's not at all surprising. So to me it sounds like you set your self up for disappointment. The best thing about ships in games like it, in my opinion, is playing more of it to see more character interactions to fuel the ships, and appreciate the fanart more. Same thing goes for so many shows, books, and so fourth. Almost all media won't fulfill the average audience ship, especially same sex relationships. If I gave up entirely on media because my ships weren't fulfilled, I'd be consuming 1/100th of the entertainment that I do. As for the self-insert protag, there's also (again my opinion) a lot of fantastic same sex ships that revolve around both protags. So I can't and won't complain there.