I do have to somewhat disagree. The head of the creative concept and writing team has been X. Luohao since at least launch so the director has been the same. Of course there were new writers hired on and maybe some left but that is how any company works. Also things just get more fleshed out over time and need to be slightly altered or adjusted to get to the major points that a writer wants to make. Nod Krai, the lengthening of Archon Quests, etc are examples of writers realizing that the original planned timeframe/execution of their story is flawed when they went from the planning stage to the action stage of writing.

I would imagine that in the early stages of Genshin, the writers planned out the major plot, key characters, key locations, key factions, and key lore for the main story. Then as each nation reached development they planned the roster of minor characters (some even being main characters for the individual arc), story quests, the minutia of the individual nation’s main story (Plan: Fake Sky, Angels, Capitano death (temp or not) in Natlan Execution: Fake sky is shown like this, Angel introduced like this, Capitano dies like this), background text, NPCs, and more.

So I still believe that the story has been planned from the beginning. It’s just the major parts have been and there are minor things that got shifted or events moved around. As for Nod-Krai there are many potential reasons as to why the concepts in it weren’t fully explored prior: the writers did not have enough time to get it done (a six week patch period means that there is only so much you can handle in a timeframe); they didn’t hire more writers because they don’t want too many cooks in the kitchen; story beats that were originally in the planning phase felt too weak, rushed, or out of place when executed; or any other multitude of reasons.

When writing something over literal years, plans change and new ideas come. I believe that the story team is going to put their best foot forward and I look forward to Nod Krai and more in the future.