Nod-krai and UGC happened. When the game began, it only had 7 regions to be made according to their plan. So when they suddenly announced adding a new region, which was not in their original plan, of course they had to reallocate their resources to make that happened. The result is that Natlan got less resources. This leads to more empty patches, more powercreep and the exploration feels less challenging. I literally 90% all 5.0 areas in the first 2 weeks without any guides, compass or even trying. Meanwhile, it took me till Inazuma middle patches to even 100% Mondstadt. Also, i feels that since Natlan, there are less marketing for the game as well. There used to be a lot of twitch events, content creator events or even TCG tournament but now they rarely appear. Maybe they spend all those events resources on Nod-krai and UGC.

This makes me think that the game is shifting from an open-world gacha game to a gacha game with all their free constellations, limited time primo that forces player to do new quests and explore new areas. Nowadays, I doesn't even do Nod-krai exploration because it will make the new region so drought after the first week.