Originally Posted by Redglyph
They had a reduced budget. Amazon and Alcon Television asked if it was possible to limit it to 6 episodes, because the initial plan was too expensive (for what they thought it was worth for).

For the "cheapened" part, it eludes me as I wrote earlier above. They spent part of the time airing an early story for an hypothetic next season when they knew it wouldn't happen. They had some hope but they could have just not spent money and air time for that, it made no sense. And they left many pending threads because of this, it could definitely have been more properly tied up.