I think these are a fair critiques and they pick up on tensions that have always been in play with these large collaborative projects. - I'd say generally what you point out as negatives are areas where developer comfort and interest have been prioritized over the player's experience. This is not an accident, but an intentional decision, although the consequence is this opens us up for obvious critique when the player experience is lacking.
In the end, these collabs are a bit more like game jams than full projects with strong directions, and that's intentional. I think it's a good sign these projects are at the point they are judged with high expectations, rather than treated as oddities. It shows that the collabs ARE getting more cohesive and compelling, although there's always room to improve. In the end, I think Chain2 was structurally and thematically more successful than Chain1 as a whole. I'm excited to see how we can improve the next collab using what we learned here.
We are listening and reading everything. All player feedback, good and bad, goes into consideration the next time around.