it's a symptom of reverse balancing / tweaking. Instead of saying hey this "X" setting make senses ( based on whatever scale ) and is reasonable but results in "Y" happening which they don't like. They then decided force "Y" to be "Z" and end up with "A" instead of "X". They the continue down this path of compromises, eventually when they expend enough time not making it work they scrap whole sections. It's really poor game design stratagem, it will continue to get worse as the put more interactive stuff in. I believe this is the reason most of the "rpg" elements and depth are missing.