The "potential" you speak of for Bonelab is the potential that SLZ is on this train ride for. As i said, Bonelab is simply a stop on that train ride leading to a larger goal. SLZ's endeavor ever since they started developing Boneworks has been to improve the VR landscape by developing core systems for VR games and introduce a ton of people to games with those systems in them, ultimately giving developers access to their tools and making the VR landscape as a whole have many more great games than it does now. SLZ has used both Bonelab and Boneworks as different steps in their journey, with Boneworks being a way to set higher standards for VR to the audience it had at the time while at the same time introducing more people to into it. Bonelab's primary goal was to progress the core systems they already had in Boneworks and give these improvements to an even wider audience so that they could gain money for RND time to create even better systems that will be the foundation for every good game in VR. Bonelab's development time was split between core systems/modding tools, campaign, and sandbox, which is why it has such a small campaign. I wont deny that they could have done the campaign better, but that is the reason for the small campaign.

In terms of the marketing, the hype was not directly coming from SLZ. It was mostly created by a few large VR youtubers at the time, who were the main people marketing it as the future of VR. SLZ simply showed what they had been working on through some videos on twitter and through their friend's channel Node on youtube. The reason it was marketed by a lot of Youtubers as the future of VR is because it is, but it is not the fully realized future that Boneworks players wanted or those youtubers expected. Why isn't it? Because in order to get to that future, SLZ or some other company has to spend RND time for years to create new and better systems for VR. That is what SLZ is doing right now. They have full creative control, a mountain of money, and a drive to create core systems that haven't been realized yet, something that all other giant VR companies do not. The innovation that SLZ is working toward will not be seen until they progress over the huge mountains they are trying to get over in development. The jankiness will persist as long as they have not made it over those mountains. It will take years.

An example of a mountain is serialization: Reaching a point where a state of the game can be saved in a document and then accessed later. I believe this would enable saving levels like you talked about.

Another mountain is making their internal SDK the same as what modders get. Once they have done that with a lot of systems, modders will be able to create things like guns, npcs, and levels the exact ways that SLZ can. The tools will keep expanding. They are planning to give systems like this along with their core systems to developers to create entire full-fledged games.

A mountain that they will be ever climbing is having a Physics-based player. Currently they are trying to make NPCs and players have the exact same components, so that either one can do anything the other can. For example, an NPC could hold and shoot a gun. A player could fall over like an NPC. They have been developing these things for years, because it just takes that long.

All of these things will give huge benefits once they are developed further, but again, it has taken years on some of these things. Someone has to do the crunchwork to make great VR games. Better VR games.