Thank you for sharing your techniques! I'm going to try them over the next few weeks and see what happens. I've never heard of opening the astral eyes in a dream as a way of astral projecting, but I'd like to try that too. The only time I flew up in a dream, I ended up in the place where lost balloons go.
I've been able to step way off the dream's path and still stay asleep, but the results were strangely unsatisfying. I loved the sense of "look what I can do" that came from changing the environment, but it felt very empty. I came to the same conclusion you did, that it's better to stay with the dream story and explore from there. I still have some experiments I'd like to try, but they are more about working together with the subconscious than trying to make it my personal playground.
Let me know how it goes! I was hard for me to be alert enough to open the astral eyes (the dream stops). And I ended up feeling unsettled about flying dreams, thinking that I'm actually astral projecting all over the place during a flying dream, translating any being I meet into my dream as a dream image, and not really seeing and interacting in a clear-minded way with whatever was out there.