I know it was planned, but the issue most people have a concern with was the planning and how things tied together. And I don't know how he thought he would get so slow when he said numerous times that cutting the workload to 1/2, 1/3, and the event release would speed up the process, but it did the complete opposite. Also, he didn't drop the side jobs from the start because he started them. He didn't drop them because he likes the 1st and 2nd side job fetish, as he said a couple of times on Patreon. This is why he kept them in the novel after people tried to give him some advice to drop them to help speed up the game's pace.
Regarding Ellie, i Don't understand how Ellie's dance classes would be relevant in any way to Sophia and what kind of sexual events can he even have with those girls and the teacher.
The relevancy is with Ellie; how do you not see that? If you play it, have you not seen what's going on in their path? You can tie that in the Ellie/lesbian path just like Coach Sophia with the Dylan/NTR route. IMO, that would have added more depth to the course for Dylan and Ellie versus the Side Job, which is nothing but fetishes, which L&P already has those types of themes in other parts of the story.