Did squenix make a mistake by investing too much in graphics and not enough in

[Rydin]

That's not my argument.
Consider you are building a new PC. You sink all your money into SLIing 4 top end GPUs and don't have any money left over for any MB. Those GPUs aren't going to do you any good. IMO SE should have diverted about 25% of their efforts from graphics and put that into content. Let's say that's 5 million (random number). If it were, that's 500 designer months of content creation SE could have afforded. In one year, ten extra people adding content (or dynamic content) might have had a larger result on the end product at the original release. And as someone mentioned, SE could have updated or added to the graphics later.

or the could have just taken the extra time needed.... so no part of the game would have to suffer... but all is well that ends well... and all aspects of the game are clearly being dissected and reevaluated...

This game doesn't have great graphics. It simply has high polygon count player character models.

Everything else, the world, the visual effects are standard, at best.

That's more of an aesthetic choice though... games that offer far less in terms of graphic quality have been called beautiful... personal I think the visual effects suffer from a lack of dynamics in the world.... Eorzea is very static at the moment but all of that is changing soon...
The lighting is way too bright everywhere no matter what time it is.... you need the dark to really compliment the light