In general, it’s like laying the ground work, so instead of trying to develop all the things at once on a limited schedule, we can start paving the way earlier so that it’s slightly less of a task later.
Sometimes this is done solely on the back end where players don’t see things as we regularly just try to predict what we might want certain systems to be able to do in the future, sometimes it’s added in game where you can see it which also helps to point out the general direction to endgamers looking for their next objectives.