Ultimately, no matter how excellent of a writer and how diverse your options, you will never be able to appeal to everyone. Don’t kneecap yourself as a writer trying to cater to every kind of reader. It’s impossible. Just write what you believe to be interesting, or at least what you believe others will find interesting.
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I am, and most likely always will be, someone who is firmly against gender-gating romances. I understand why game devs would choose to do so and there are perfectly valid arguments for it, but when it comes down to it - it almost always leads to disappointment.
I am a big fan of romance (as in, I grew up reading trashy romance novels) and so I am admittedly the sort of person who might play a game mostly for that.
I also always play a wlw. This is not a matter of self-insert, but wlw romances are just what grips me by the heart the most. And as such, there is not a lot I dislike more than being barred from a female RO because I don’t want to play a man.
When I play, I want to choose the RO that interests me the most, and the one I feel has the best dynamic with my MC. Since Cyberpunk has been brought up here before: playing a female V means my only wlw option was Judy - a character I like well enough, but whose romance did not work for me at all. Panam would have been my prefered choice (the dynamic is much more enjoyable and it would have worked so well with my V) but since she only goes for dudes, I basically…have no option at all in the game.
And even if there HAD been another option…well, that wouldn’t solve the problem of me wanting my V with Panam.
The point is - as a player, I like to be able to choose as I like without being punished for playing a woman. Now if someone wants to gender-gate the romances in their game, go for it, but I do have to admit that I won’t play it.
In the end it’s up to the author, of course. I personally simply feel that it leads to a whole lot of disappointment without much to gain.
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as someone who nearly always plays as a woman romancing women, i don’t think either of these would especially appeal to me. i tend to prefer to play human or half-human races (in the 5’-6’ height range) and would prefer my MC not to be noticeably taller than her partner.
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With the caveats that I am a) not a big romance fan, and b) not a writer, which might make my opinion somewhat less relevant, I think the first step in writing a good RO is writing a good character. By this I don’t only mean one with an interesting, three-dimensional personality, but also one with a relevant role in the story. It’s quite obvious when a character exists solely to be romanced, and disappears or contributes nothing in scenes that move the plot along, only showing up to be wooed in various downtime segments.
At least that type of character is easy to avoid and can essentially be demoted to a minor one. The dreaded designated RO, on the other hand, is impossible to avoid. Instead of lacking a function plot-wise, they play the love interest, and get thrown at the MC at every twist and turn. That sort of thing is enough to actually make me stop playing a game.
The best option would probably be to plan the main cast and their relevance to the story first, then decide which of them work as ROs. Unless you have a very large cast it would perhaps be most practical to make most of them bi/pan, and with a small cast, possibly gender-variable as well. Ultimately, however, their function as ROs should be secondary to their function as interesting, relevant characters.
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Suspension of belief is a precious and fragile thing for fiction writers, and different readers have different factors that demolish it. A decade of debates on this forum has made abundantly clear that there’s a significant constituency (cutting across identity groups, not just straight) for whom being asked to pick a character’s gender shatters their suspension of belief in that character.
For some of them, gender is so significant that knowing in the back of their mind that the character “could have been” another gender makes that NPC seem unreal (even if they never actually pick a different gender for that NPC, and thus only experience them as e.g. a gay male character). For others, being asked to select anything about a non-MC character (beyond the MC’s reactions and responses to them) makes that NPC feel like an MC puppet and not “real.”
So I agree with you that there’s a legitimate downside to writing gender-flippable characters: the writer loses that constituency of readers (at least for those characters). And of course there are other upsides to writing gender-fixed characters: it helps in telling certain stories about gender. I’m reading Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea series again, which from Tehanu onward was very much about gender, and of course I wouldn’t want to deny the legitimacy of that project and others like it. Also there are representation issues if (for example) you and I as cis guys have the option to “flip” all the major potential trans characters in the stories we’re reading to be cis.
With all that said, as someone with a different set of suspension-demolishers, my personal reaction to your comment I quote above is “of course they didn’t have that experience – they didn’t have any experiences. They’re not human.” 
Authors write characters as a cluster of identity traits and tendencies. There’s no obligation on authors to root those traits in an explicit history of experiences, and they usually don’t. I’ll venture to say that no author works out a fully detailed history for all their characters with a sense of how each year’s life-experiences and relationships led that character to become who they are. (I’m sure there are a few who put the degree of attention into their characters that Tolkien did into his languages – but like Tolkien, those are a definite minority.)
Like world-history, the authors throw out some bits of character-history to lend verisimilitude to their story, especially for major motivations of major characters – but never all of the history, and often leaving out major elements. Fiction (including CoGs) abounds with well-drawn characters where we’re never shown a specifically gendered set of experiences to explain why they are the way they are. That doesn’t break my suspension of disbelief – not even when I’m asked in an IF work to pick their gender, which signals pretty clearly that I’m unlikely to get any gender-specific background to their motivations.
Ged and Tenar in Earthsea need to be male and female for LeGuin’s story from Tehanu onward to work. But not every character’s most salient traits are rooted in their gendered experiences. If I were reading LotR for the first time, I wouldn’t blink at Froda or Lego-lass; I don’t recall anything about Tolkien’s portrayal that feels rooted in gender to me, either explicitly or implicitly. Flip the pronouns and (unless I’d earlier read another version) I wouldn’t find the characters the least bit implausible.
Thus it’s easy for me to say (e.g. of my own game) “play with Breden as a man; if you do, he’ll never have been anything else, and you’ll have exactly the character I would have written if I had genderlocked him.” But of course choice matters, and I understand that for quite a few people, once they’ve been offered the choice to pick Breden’s gender, he’ll never feel entirely “real” to them. So we have to pick who we’re writing for, recognizing (as noted above) that we’re never going to make everyone happy.
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I can only chime in as a player, not a content creator (yet!). But when I play games, I really appreciate being able to choose character genders, and having the characters be player-sexual (see: Creme de la Creme, Tally Ho, Jolly Good, Wayhaven). The Soul Stone War’s an oddity–I genuinely enjoyed playing it, despite the gender-locked characters, but that’s mostly because the characters are extremely well-defined and intriguing.
I prefer a lack of restriction though, since it can get a bit frustrating if a character type I’m attracted to isn’t particularly interested in the MC. It’s definitely more realistic–but I play games for the escapism, not necessarily the realism!
In the case of mainstream games, off the top of my head, I’ve enjoyed the romances in the Mass Effect series (despite it having gender and orientation-locked characters), but I’ve also enjoyed Divinity 2, where the romanceable characters are playersexual. I’ve also felt frustration at Mass Effect Andromeda because I couldn’t romance Cora while playing as a woman, but I’ve also felt frustration at Skyrim because the romance felt… well, generally lacking, despite most characters being playersexual. Also Skyrim does this terrible thing of making insanely intriguing characters non-romanceable (Ulfric, Tullius, Brynjolf).
In the end, I think all of these things should be secondary to developing characters who are genuinely charming and interesting all on their own though, with or without the romance involved. There are many things we can control as creators, but one thing we definitely cannot, are player tastes, since it’s as diverse as the stars in the sky!
I’d encourage you to write something you’ll enjoy writing and playing yourself, because ultimately, you matter too! The game and stories you create should bring you joy and fulfillment. So don’t stress too much, friend!
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There is a lot of issues here. The first being. You haven´t understood enbies and their orientation at all. You are writing androphile and gynophile under orientation so I can only assume that you mean attracted to masculinity or feminity. Yet you also write that a straight half-orc will be attracted to an enby who present as a man and have biologically male equipment. Yet that same half-orc won´t be interested in a regular gay male, which has two implications.
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Either the ro sees the non-binary character as their attracted to gender, which as a non-binary person I find uncomfortable.
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Enbies can as the only one change the ro sexuality.
Also can a bisexual enbi romance everybody or do they somehow end up with less options than their andro- /gynophile comrades?
Also you are using asexuality wrong so just don´t use it and have a flag for not interested in romance sub-plot instead.
Enbies generally don´t fit with with orientation locks as you can properly see.
As for the others this does absolutely reduces replay ability for some. (For some it would properly increase it.). As an example I returned cyberpunk once I found out how the romance options worked. It might sound petty, but there were so many other problem that the non-sensical orientation locking just made me go nope and returned it before me trial period was over.
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Ha! I’m the same except flipped. I only play mlm. I also don’t self-insert. I just don’t want to be anything else.
Of course, I sometimes play F!MCs, but I want that to be my choice for an interesting playthrough and not because I have no choice if I want to date this one guy.
It’s to the point I just no longer play any IFs that have straight male ROs. I’ve already had two ruined for me by the deep dysphoria triggered by being told that, because I can’t bring myself to be the woman I was told to be before I could even speak, these men will never love me. One of them I was very drawn to, but I’m not good enough as I am, so 
As a writer, save the occasional gay man (tho there’s none in any of the IFs I’m actively working on), all my characters end up available to any gender because I just like writing queer characters. And I like when love is about who you are and sometimes what you do (something you can control) not what you were born as (something you can’t)
And don’t get me started on the ROs in 2077. I have a lot to say and none of it is good.
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I’m going to echo something that a lot of people have already said: you should write something that’s interesting to you. Most of the time this advice is framed in terms of satisfying the author–every writer writes for themself first–but this is good for the player too, and here’s why:
When you write something to satisfy yourself, it will be more satisfying to read, whether its romance or something else. You’re more likely to lend depth and development to the #options you prefer because they’re more fun to write. If you prefer some #options above others (characters, play-styles, or paths), it’ll probably be obvious, and you’ll be in danger of creating “correct” or “canon” play-throughs.
Think planes (bear with me). Put your oxygen mask on first before helping others! Flight attendants don’t tell you to do this because they want you to be selfish but because you can’t help others if you are incapacitated. You also can’t please your audience if you aren’t pleased first.
If you write ROs to check off boxes rather than writing them to appeal to yourself, you’re probably going to end up with favorites, and that will transfer to the text. The ones you like best will be more satisfying to read because they were more satisfying to write, and you invested more into them. This won’t be very fun for players/characters who are locked out of the “correct” routes.
In addition to producing better writing, you’ll also be more likely to stick with it. It can be a real slog to write a scene with a character you don’t enjoy.
With regards to gender and sexual orientation, in my opinion (as a writer), the benefits of gender-flippable and player-sexual characters far outweigh the cons. It allows you to maintain a small cast that can theoretically appeal to most readers. I write my romances to please myself first and then make the characters flippable so that others who don’t share my gender and/or orientation can also enjoy them.
It won’t appeal to everyone, but you have to compromise somewhere. It’s either going to be on gender-flipping, depth, or length.
So if these stories–
–appeal to you, then write those romances. But if can’t imagine playing (or just don’t want to play) any of these stories (F!MC romancing lesbian dwarf; M!MC romancing gay human; etc) then you need to rethink your plans.
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@Eiwynn Thank you so much for your comments, lots of food for thought.
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Regarding the RO alignments, an unrepentantly evil character who never really shifts back to good or neutral will not be my cup of tea unless I am actually doing an evil playthrough (for the achievements), unless the PC has a blue and orange morality similar to A Kiss from Death. Some people may prefer unrepentantly evil ROs, but I am not one of them.
What would work is having the RO alignments shift with the player’s playthrough (example: the sorceress’s default setting could still be chaotic, but rather than being chaotic evil all the time, she shifts to chaotic good on a good playthrough, but doesn’t really bat an eye if the PC has to do a necessary evil act, and advocates the pragmatic option. On an evil playthrough, she would be a willing accomplice to the player, more so than the other ROs). Think J from the Lost Heir trilogy (even though they never lose their pragmatic coldness, they are only evil out of necessity rather than for the lulz, and they can be romanced by a good PC and become more good as a result), or Miss Caraway from Tin Star (her alignment actually shifts with the player’s, but her personality keeps its baseline regardless of the playthrough).
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Wow! What a supportive community. There’s so much hard-earned wisdom and informed opinion. I’m really grateful for all the detailed and insightful responses. I have so much to think about, but I know my work will be have been better for this thread.
@Eiwynn re:Cyberpunk, it’s especially helpful for me to think of characters as gateway mechanics to lore and of the burdens we place upon them as lenses, not only to themselves, but whatever world they’re a window to. That, in order to do things well, we have to ask less over more time–maybe I’m adding this? But to keep things rich and moving we have to ask more in less time. All in the balance, I suppose. I’ll keep this close to heart.
@sviyagin re:writing for self–I think you’ve managed to distill much of what many have said. It’s been my experience writing elsewhere that, on subjects that don’t captivate us, we can’t captivate others. The writing, however excellent, becomes lifeless. Well said and worth keeping in mind. Don’t know what is says about me that I must often remind myself of the simplest lessons.
@Shyranno Mass Effect and DOS2 are great examples. In DOS2, I don’t think anything was lost in any RO’s concrete identity by being playersexual, though their genders and races are fixed. And the alignment spectrum in that series skews dark. I’m going to think about this more.
@Havenstone Lot of great points well articulated. I like the encompassing framework of “suspension of disbelief.” I think it helps to bring disparate obstacles under one discussable heading. Such a tightrope. Thank you, also, for bringing ULG into the convo. She’s earned her place.
@biextroverts Thank you for answering in terms of height! Easy to get lost in the philosophy, but this is the material objection for you (and many others, I’m sure). So valuable. And practical. Thanks.
@EvilChani So much here, so much good stuff. I’ve bought Evertree and am reading now. Thanks for the recommend.
@Elysian Same: so much good stuff. You’re so well read! I may PM you with questions about pieces as I read them if you’re open to that. Also, maybe you are an neutral-to-evil elven sorceror? I’m thinking Solas from DA Inquisition.
Cheers, everyone. Thanks again!
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Much luck to you, friend! Your project seems like a lot of fun already! 
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@dwsnee Sure, PM if you’d like! As for Solas, I don’t know a huge amount about him since Inquisition is the only Dragon Age game I’ve never played (I do own it, but it just blackscreens on my tired old laptop), but I can say that my characters do tend to make better hairstyle choices.
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