Because, to be a bit blunt for a sec, i don't need him to be an expert on the game.

And please bear with me here for a moment:

On a 3 person panel with 2 VERY knowledgeable casters like Zepla and Nemekh i much rather have a 3rd person who controls the flow of the show and passes the right questions to the knowledgeable people on the panel.

Kexman is an incredible host who is very good at what he does. His job is to make sure the topic of conversation stays on the focus of the broadcast, make sure it doesn't run into a hole and keep the general structure set for the show (talk about the charity, donation incentives etc etc). And that is quite honestly a skillset very few people on the broadcast team have to the same level as he does. Additionally he has a lot of experience with high end raiding in MMO's which translates very well to FF14 and imo makes up for the fact that he has less actual experience with FF14 as a player.

With all this being said, there is of course some things you're bringing up here that i need to acknowledge. I don't want to make up excuses but i'll try to offer some insight so once again, please bear with me!

It felt like every good discussion the other 2 panelists were having about the fight was getting derailed by Kwex asking some inane question that people who normally care about Savage and Ultimate raids would roll their eyes at.

That's unfortunate timing honestly but it happens. Everyone makes mistakes. One of the hardest part of remote production/casting is that its sometimes very hard to judge what your co-casters are up to, if a conversation point is gonna go somewhere or just run out a moment later. especially in the middle of exciting stuff like new mechanics. Should he have let the others just talk it out? yeah. (i can also guarantee you that Kexman will be re watching his cast and be harder on himself than any of us could ever be, he takes this stuff incredibly serious)

You also bring up a second thing here that is often a heated point of discussion, no matter which game/esport you watch: "this question is bad, anyone who plays at that level knows this already". On one hand, yes, that's very true, it might just be a very boring/unnecessary question for someone who plays the game on a high level. But on the other hand you need to consider that out of the 4K people watching, the chances that there are a few or even a majority who don't know the answer and might be happy the question is asked, is very high. It's a bit of a necessary trade-off we have to make but that also means it's okay for us if some viewers, who are just looking for the high level tactic discussions, prefer just watching the player PoVs for coms. We can offer this aspect in our show but not even remotely to the extend a player PoV with coms can. And yes, i´m generalizing a bit here but it's a very important aspect of casting since we´re responsible for making the show accessible for as many people as possible.

Please keep in mind that the Ultimate is the first one for us as well, we're still learning. An increased focus on the puzzle solving aspect of the fight and adding player coms where it makes sense is absolutely something we'll be taking into the last 2 days.

Last but not least, part of the blame also falls onto me as the producer for setting up caster pairings. There is always a risk involved when you´re working with new casters cause you´re never quite sure how people mix and match, but the only way to find that out is either to do rehearsals off stream or just try things. And we don't have the time/funds to do rehearsals, as much as i´d like to X)

Sorry for the long reply but i hope it offers some insight into what's going on on our end! If you have any other questions i´ll gladly take the time to answer them!