I think one of the big issues that makes game dev so difficult is this natural opposition: That every new project is uncharted territory for the developer, juxtaposed against the fact that games are made from highly interconnected, interdependent systems.

The former requires you to constantly experiment and try different approaches to get things working and find out what’s fun, but the latter demands that things constantly stay as stable as possible to avoid the knock on effects that might negatively impact the work you’ve already done. You touched on both these points in your post.

I think the best way to mitigate these problems is first, to have a strong vision for your game at the end of pre-production, and second (and often missed), to have a clear prioritisation of the different elements of your design, that everyone agrees on. Once you know what you’re making, and know what aspects of your design take precedence over what other aspects of your design, you can make compromises through development to make sure that the core vision is maintained.

You’re right though; it’s a difficult balance to maintain, and the industry isn’t going to solve these issues overnight.

Have you tried the content aware scale BTW? Combine that with the content aware fill and the spot healing brush tool and you’ll have that panoramic fixed in a heartbeat.