User blog comment:SomeoneYouUsedToKnow/SYUTK's V5E6 -Known By It's KRAAAW - Impressions/Recap/@comment-2601:741:C200:692A:A8B5:16B0:B6B7:4635-20171124060709/@comment-26018514-20171124071635

that's because they are writing the movie first...

they have a General Summary somewhere of all the major points on their RWBY timeline, they then choose a chunk to focus on and say "this is a volume", then they pad it out while trying to juggle the movie format & the episode format, this leads to issues like episodes with lackluster resolutions because the problems they set up are to be paid off later, pushes fights predictably towards mid-volume because that is where the movie needs one, etc.

The problem is they need more time to animate fights so they are severely limiting both fight scenes scope(within the plot) and frequency.