That's true. There definitely wasn't a clear plan on where they wanted the game to go.Personally, I see the LT model as hell from a technical point of view. You have a countless number of fetishes and variables, and in practice, you can never fill them all. You condemn your players and fans to use their imagination. And this is especially true if the dev doesn't like to write. I feel that dev love his project is essential, as without it he will never reach his full potential.
I would never think of doing such a thing, also because doing so would make it difficult to give the game a real direction, something that is essential for development: You need to have a clear path.
The best way to lose this is to look to satisfy niches.
But I meant more like the technical side of things. The game is just badly designed. It's not just direction, but everything. There was literally no proper consideration towards future workflow, for example. That's why adding new content is such a colossal nightmare and Inno's had to recreate a large portion of the game to make it possible to like, add the game content.
Like, seriously; there was clearly no thought put into "how am I going to add the planned areas into the game." Why even come up with a plan for direction you want your game content to go if you're not going to build the game around the plan. Why have a plan that you're not going to build around.
Every major delay to this game from the technical perspective has just made me question reality. Just like, seriously lacking any level of thinking things through. So much of the game was just done with a "this is what I feel like adding right now" with no thought towards future content.
But you are forgetting one thing. Modding can solve a lot of the problems. But only if you plan for it ahead of time. If you want to allow for modding if you properly design the content workflow, then anyone can add content. It doesn't have to be only you.