u/Nintara

here are some theories i've heard or come up with myself:

1. cash grab (maybe they were in a time of financial difficulty? shadow tower abyss went unlocalized the year before, otogi sold like shit and seemed to be relatively expensive by early fromsoft standards, and none of the 3rd gen games had sold more than ac2)
2. trying to regain the pvp players that were burned by nexus and returned to 2aa by making a purely pvp-focused game
3. testing out tweaks to the changes introduced in nexus in a side game before commiting to them in what they knew would likely be the last ac game on ps2
4. they genuinely thought it would make for a good game on it's own and was worth 60 dollars
5. they thought the "fight against randomly generated acs" idea was really good and thought they wouldn't be able to jam it into lr or ff

2 and 3 seem the most likely to me, but i could also see the argument for 1 considering that ff was also made in a really short timeframe