I agree with your points and don’t agree with crunch practices, and this is a bit of a nitpick, but what’s your source for crunching decreasing the liklihood of meeting a deadline?

I can easily imagine those things having correlation, as if you’re already on track for a deadline, why would you need to crunch?

I can’t really think of a complete reason for causation to go the other way though.

Reminds me of the Ethshar series. I don’t remember what book it happens in, but in one of them, it’s a bit of worldbuilding that Divination wizards typically do a quick divination in the morning to see what clients they’ll get that day, then also do a divination to see what they’ll want to ask. That way, when the client comes into their shop, the wizard already knows who they are, what their question is, and the answer to the question, proving their abilities.

I’d recommend Kingdoms of Amalur if you’ve never played it. It has neat lore, and the combat is fairly satisfying imo. My main complaint is that combat gets kinda easy when you start approaching the level cap, even on max difficulty, but I still go back to the game every now and then.