I gather from the posts here that Bo was taking a quick break from ToT and started messing around with the side project as a kind of concession for the Patreons. Koda then decided he wanted to mess around with a few ideas after Bo finished that he decided to try to implement into Warrior's Guild after the fact.
I don't think it was meant to take away from the ToT work. In fact, I think it was just supposed to be something Bo wanted to do to break up the routine while waiting for Koda to catch up. Maybe Koda just couldn;t resist the opportunity to monkey around with some ideas bouncing around in his head though, and it morphed into more of a distraction than either intended it to be.
I could be wrong though. It;s just the impression I get form piecing together the info that leaked here from the discord.
The big question then should be: Why is Bo taking breaks inbetween making floors now instead of taking breaks whenever a floor's finished? Is he getting burned out from having to cram so much stuff into a single floor now?
IMO they should give the "shorter floors" way of doing things another go, it's what most people wanted after 6F and what they said they'd do for 7F anyways. The whole "we tried it and it didn't feel right" explanation seems like it was pulled out of their asses. They DID try it, with Ms Claus, and some people liked it better than Karen's floor despite the big difference in development times. NOW
I guess they're trying it, but in a different outdated game and before the more important ToT updates for some reason...
Why though? Of course a lot less people will like it under these circumstances.
Just look at how 7F is shaping up, there's a real possibility it'll take them one full year to come out with a real update to their game, it all could've been avoided but the alternative "didn't feel right" to them. I'm pretty sure 7F won't be double the size of Karen's floor, too. And even if by some miracle it was, it would set a very weird precedent.