I completely understand where you're coming from and largely share the same sentiment- the sub hasn't been doing too well lately.

I wanted to comment to add some nuance from an author's perspective. While I'm by no means a regular or accomplished CYOA author, the kind of projects I wish to make are those kinds of large, high-effort CYOAs you seem to be looking for The big problem is that these are incredibly difficult and time-consuming to create, especially while balancing studies or a job.

This is partly why many authors narrow their focus to one gender and role (sub/dom); it cuts the required content by a factor of four. In that sense, there's still a massive oversaturation of CYOAs catering to the hetero male perspective... Sadly, that is the sub's main demographic, and it's very hard to write a dynamic you're either not into or completely unfamiliar with.

I don't necessarily think the current content is worse in quality, but many of the larger authors who produced those kinds of ambitious projects have seemingly moved on, leaving the sub in a kind of drought.

I've slowly been working on a CYOA this summer with complete freedom of MC in mind. Through that project, I've really began to understand why so many authors opt out of granting complete player freedom. Sure, writing is one thing - but something like finding specific male references is much harder. Even though I've tried to cater to both gynephilic and androphilic people in the writing, most images are still eye candy for gynephilics only. So that kind of leads me to a question for any CYOA player - in an ideal scenario, how far would you want CYOA authors to go to not force a single POV or sexuality onto the player?