Vision, direction, design philosophy, approach

Call it what you will, all these things are necessary when adding content, but also when making changes to preexisting content too. People say they can't have a vision until they change/fix the game, but changing and fixing the game blindly with no direction or design philosophy is a principle I fail to understand, and quite frankly, is a huge problem if this is actually what's happening.

I mean, for example, there have been lots of "fixes" that have made me go "wtf" because they basically changed something I liked about the game in the first place.

So what was the motivation behind this change/fix? What was the approach, design philosophy, vision, direction, if any, that motivated these specific changes and "fixes" ? That's what I would like to know.