An Open Letter to DE on Balance

[Aexic]

Okay DE.  I'm going to step back from the actual decisions being made here.  I want to talk about the philosophy behind them, and what you, as developers, need to be thinking about when you make these changes.  They smack of kneejerk reactions, without understanding the deeper meanings of why things happen the way they do.  So as someone who's worked in game development myself, I'm going to help you bridge the gap between player's-eye viewpoint and dev's-eye viewpoint.

Now, with any content you make, people are going to look for strategies that beat it.  That's the nature of the game.  It's the nature of every video game - to overcome the challenges the devs have put before you and reap the rewards, then use those rewards to meet and overcome the next set of challenges.  Your goal, as a developer, is to provide a challenge to your playerbase that is difficult enough to require strategy and tactics and preparation, but is also winnable within a margin of error that is humanly achievable.

Warframe's highest-end content has a serious problem with that.  Once enemy levels get into the 60s, 70s, 80s+, survival becomes increasingly binary.  You are either alive and strictly invulnerable, invisible, or sheltered behind tens of thousands of intervening effective health points, or you are dead the moment you are exposed to enemy fire.  First it's the bombards, who deal ridiculous damage over huge AoE.  Then you notice that seekers and eviscerators are one-shotting you too, and soon enough you fear stepping outside that Frost's bubble for even a half second lest you catch a stray Grakata round and spontaneously evaporate into a cloud of gore.

Some people look at that and go 'nope, not playing that, that's not fun.'  In the interest of full disclosure, I'm one of 'em, typically.  I've never been fond of games where one slight mistake will end you.  This is why I don't play sorties, despite the rewards.  I don't know a lot of people, I don't like trying to put together a team for it, and it has such strict requirements on what you can and cannot bring to the table that most of my arsenal is useless in it.

Others, however, look at that and go 'challenge accepted.'  They will look for ways to overcome even this extreme difficulty.  Like Ivara surviving while invisible and using sleep arrow and covert lethality to score kills regardless of armor and HP.  Or Blind Mirage rendering entire spawns comatose across an entire map and then merrily obliterating them one after another.  Or Ash using a combination of invulnerability and finisher damage to kill enemies he could never take in a straight fight.  Or Excalibur utilizing EB's range and blind-spin to get free finishers and stay out of reach of enemies while still benefitting from his sword boost passive.

The fact is, players look for ways to trivialize content because there's content that's very good at trivializing players.  It is, in fact, using content-trivializing strategies is the only way to survive player-trivializing content.

When health and armor don't matter, and shields are merely a formality between enemies and your health, your best guns take off mere slivers of enemy health, and all the buffs in the world won't fix either of those situations, that's when players reach for the nuke options - invulnerability, invisibility, scaling damage absorption, finisher damage, finisher openers, and instant-kills.

What's important to remember is that players are right to do this.  You made the content capable of obliterating anyone without these tools; therefore, players are going to use the tools you gave them that work.  And they're going to keep using them, until you either take the tools away (nerfing), or the tools are no longer necessary and there are more efficient and less-drastic means of accomplishing the mission.  If my guns started to deal damage again, and my shields and health could actually survive a bullet or two, I might decide to use them over wtfhax bladestorm/stacked snowglobes/BLIND BLIND BLIND SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP FINISHER FINISHER FINISHER.

So here's what you, as game devs, need to do.  Ask yourselves the question, "What are players SUPPOSED to do to defeat this content?"  And gear your changes towards THAT.  You need to make a hard decision as to what gear and what methods players are allowed to use, and which are exploitative and need to be either nerfed-out or compensated for.  The answer "Players aren't supposed to defeat this content" isn't an acceptable answer; it's a terrible GM that measures success in trashed character sheets, and likewise it's a terrible developer that measures success in Game Overs.

Finally, you need to look at rewards in the light of the effort required to get them.  If defeating a piece of content is supposed to be a difficult task and a momentous event when you and your cell succeeds, then the rewards should be commensurate.  The rewards need to be something immediately good and useful.  If you throw out player-trivializing content, and then say to those who beat it "Congratulations, now run it five hundred times more if you want a reasonable chance to get the actual good rewards from it" then they're going to look at you, scoff, and walk out.

This is how you make good gameplay.

[Sm0kiT]

What can I say? I totally agree with everything you said. This thread needs to be on top for the rest of the time DE needs to fix enemy scaling (and all the problems that come along with it). *big thumbsup*

[Burnthesteak87]

+1

I would like anyway to differentiate and underline that people blindly crying and holding a grudge just for a nerf have no rights to do it.
Most of the nerfs made yesterday were legit.

What really should make people fed up is 6 months of announced changes that end up lacking quality and seems just to be rushed at the best.

Edited May 28, 2016 by Burnthesteak87

[Sm0kiT]

I have to slightly disagree with you. Those nerfs were only legit in one scenario: If DE fixed the damn enemy scaling PRIOR to them.

[Multicom-EN-]

Agreeing with what you're saying here. Overwatch is here and there are other games. Until DE takes a look at enemy scaling and armor instead of just "buffing, nerfing, buffing again, nerfing it into the ground again", ruining players builds and taking away their time invested into the game, I'm not planning on playing this game much other than trading for occasional plat/items for giveaways on our group and to play new updates.

[madSimon]

Completely agree 100%. I know it's said so often it's cliche, but it really is as if DE doesn't actually play their own game and don't know how to design challenges at this point.

Look at Raids - they're some of the most boring gameplay available. Spamming CC and pushing buttons.

Sorties, as mentioned, are even less fun than the lower level versions, because everyone just brings their cheese strats to complete them. It's just a daily chore that I've given up on.

[BlackCoMerc]

6 hours ago, ZaeXithos said:

Okay DE.  I'm going to step back from the actual decisions being made here.  I want to talk about the philosophy behind them, and what you, as developers, need to be thinking about when you make these changes.  They smack of kneejerk reactions, without understanding the deeper meanings of why things happen the way they do.  So as someone who's worked in game development myself, I'm going to help you bridge the gap between player's-eye viewpoint and dev's-eye viewpoint.

Now, with any content you make, people are going to look for strategies that beat it.  That's the nature of the game.  It's the nature of every video game - to overcome the challenges the devs have put before you and reap the rewards, then use those rewards to meet and overcome the next set of challenges.  Your goal, as a developer, is to provide a challenge to your playerbase that is difficult enough to require strategy and tactics and preparation, but is also winnable within a margin of error that is humanly achievable.

Warframe's highest-end content has a serious problem with that.  Once enemy levels get into the 60s, 70s, 80s+, survival becomes increasingly binary.  You are either alive and strictly invulnerable, invisible, or sheltered behind tens of thousands of intervening effective health points, or you are dead the moment you are exposed to enemy fire.  First it's the bombards, who deal ridiculous damage over huge AoE.  Then you notice that seekers and eviscerators are one-shotting you too, and soon enough you fear stepping outside that Frost's bubble for even a half second lest you catch a stray Grakata round and spontaneously evaporate into a cloud of gore.

Some people look at that and go 'nope, not playing that, that's not fun.'  In the interest of full disclosure, I'm one of 'em, typically.  I've never been fond of games where one slight mistake will end you.  This is why I don't play sorties, despite the rewards.  I don't know a lot of people, I don't like trying to put together a team for it, and it has such strict requirements on what you can and cannot bring to the table that most of my arsenal is useless in it.

Others, however, look at that and go 'challenge accepted.'  They will look for ways to overcome even this extreme difficulty.  Like Ivara surviving while invisible and using sleep arrow and covert lethality to score kills regardless of armor and HP.  Or Blind Mirage rendering entire spawns comatose across an entire map and then merrily obliterating them one after another.  Or Ash using a combination of invulnerability and finisher damage to kill enemies he could never take in a straight fight.  Or Excalibur utilizing EB's range and blind-spin to get free finishers and stay out of reach of enemies while still benefitting from his sword boost passive.

The fact is, players look for ways to trivialize content because there's content that's very good at trivializing players.  It is, in fact, using content-trivializing strategies is the only way to survive player-trivializing content.

When health and armor don't matter, and shields are merely a formality between enemies and your health, your best guns take off mere slivers of enemy health, and all the buffs in the world won't fix either of those situations, that's when players reach for the nuke options - invulnerability, invisibility, scaling damage absorption, finisher damage, finisher openers, and instant-kills.

What's important to remember is that players are right to do this.  You made the content capable of obliterating anyone without these tools; therefore, players are going to use the tools you gave them that work.  And they're going to keep using them, until you either take the tools away (nerfing), or the tools are no longer necessary and there are more efficient and less-drastic means of accomplishing the mission.  If my guns started to deal damage again, and my shields and health could actually survive a bullet or two, I might decide to use them over wtfhax bladestorm/stacked snowglobes/BLIND BLIND BLIND SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP FINISHER FINISHER FINISHER.

So here's what you, as game devs, need to do.  Ask yourselves the question, "What are players SUPPOSED to do to defeat this content?"  And gear your changes towards THAT.  You need to make a hard decision as to what gear and what methods players are allowed to use, and which are exploitative and need to be either nerfed-out or compensated for.  The answer "Players aren't supposed to defeat this content" isn't an acceptable answer; it's a terrible GM that measures success in trashed character sheets, and likewise it's a terrible developer that measures success in Game Overs.

Finally, you need to look at rewards in the light of the effort required to get them.  If defeating a piece of content is supposed to be a difficult task and a momentous event when you and your cell succeeds, then the rewards should be commensurate.  The rewards need to be something immediately good and useful.  If you throw out player-trivializing content, and then say to those who beat it "Congratulations, now run it five hundred times more if you want a reasonable chance to get the actual good rewards from it" then they're going to look at you, scoff, and walk out.

This is how you make good gameplay.

Thank you for making a thread for this. DE needs to see this.

Simply put, it's time to take a hard look at the entire game, and rebalance everything from the ground up.

Said before, all weapons should have Serration built in, and have a hard damage cap. Elemental mods could change damage type, not add to it. This would allow for better balance and more room on weapons for functional mods such as fire rate, ammo and mag capacity, etc.

Enemies need a hard cap. Maybe 2-3x base health max. Close the gap between high and low levels and let us engage enemies as opposed to just Cheesing them.

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

Endless Enemy scaling and the open ended challenge it presented has always been a combination of a negative for balance tweaks and a draw for those players seeking to beat the clock. 

Sometimes I don't know why they even bother with powers. Loki has switch teleport, the one legitimate use for a spy mission and it's nerfed, or prevented in certain vaults... Same with Wu-Kong and his cloud walker, yet Limbo can walk right through those laser grids. It's only a matter of time before he gets his hat punched in as well. 

 

[Fifield]

I agree with what you're saying but it comes across a bit arrogant.  I'd tone it down if you want DE to listen.  I'll remove this paragraph if you do so.

You highlight the bonkers nature of the game design for all but the newer players.  It really is a tragic waste of an awesome game engine, fantastic graphics artists and a wonderful original premise (co-op horde shooter).

DE are wilfully oblivious to this.  It would be a piece of cake for another company to come along, copy almost everything, fix this core gameplay and steal all DE's customers.

It's not about enemy EHP or damage.  It's about the ridiculously OP powers that were in the game from the beginning and heavily buffed with the corrupted mods.  The high level enemies have resulted from that to provide us with some kind of half-assed challenge.

What [DE]Steve said in the Devstream yesterday seriously concerned me.  I paraphrase but he doesn't want enemies to be as strong as us (not that anyone is asking for that) and so he wants us to be OP.  He must really want us to be OP if he's using a straw man argument.

Thing is, once the mass CC powers are fixed, DE can provide challenge easily.  It's literally adding one more planet, making up some node names, putting a few numbers in a table and giving us a reason to go there.

Why won't they do it?

[Rorgal_Sina]

From what I can tell, you need to nerf both the frames and the enemies.

DE decided to nerf the frames first.

Forums rages and complains the game is now broken.

Personally, I don't feel that the game is any more broken. It'll definitely be more broken if they nerfed the enemies first before nerfing the frames, so I'm content.

As the Trinity player of my clan, I'm perfectly content with the nerf.

[Noteybook]

Agreed. Not sure what DE is doing anymore. No transparency, no communication, no player-input, they just do whatever and we have to deal with it anymore. D3 was beyond awful when it came out, but Blizzard listened to their players and now Diablo 3 is an awesome game to play. It should be that simple, but DE is so reluctant to fix anything in a positive, meaningful way that I think there's no hope left.

[Morty2989]

I wish I could upvote the OP a million times over.

The problem really is enemy scaling, nothing is gonna matter until that is addressed. We were here once before when the duration/efficiency changes happened and the assumption was that it'd dovetail into the new starchart rework but that has yet to happen. It's hard not to call something a nerf when it's always the player losing something, you know? Fix the actual problem and maybe we'll stop taking everything so personal and go back to using the frames and weapons we actually like instead of the ones we feel we have to after hours of tedium.  

I have 99% of everything in the game so at the end of the day, they can change whatever they want and I'll get around it easy enough. I just wish we'd get back to new content and having fun grinding it out. I feel like I'm being punished for having things and wanting to still being here.

[Gilmaesh]

Balanced content could probably happen now that they're going full balance mode. There are specifics enemies that are problematic (angstrum comba / napalm / scorch / corpus tech / osprey just to name a few). I'm also against one shot since there is no challenge there and the whole difficulty scaling need to be addressed, but it will be hard to balance endless mission.

One thing though, you say players cheese because of high content and bad enemies scaling, yeah right, players were using Mirage for just a few waves of t4 interception, players cheese def just for 20 waves etc etc, such challenge, such difficulty. That made me laugh.

[BlackCoMerc]

18 minutes ago, Fifield said:

I agree with what you're saying but it comes across a bit arrogant.  I'd tone it down if you want DE to listen.  I'll remove this paragraph if you do so.

You highlight the bonkers nature of the game design for all but the newer players.  It really is a tragic waste of an awesome game engine, fantastic graphics artists and a wonderful original premise (co-op horde shooter).

DE are wilfully oblivious to this.  It would be a piece of cake for another company to come along, copy almost everything, fix this core gameplay and steal all DE's customers.

It's not about enemy EHP or damage.  It's about the ridiculously OP powers that were in the game from the beginning and heavily buffed with the corrupted mods.  The high level enemies have resulted from that to provide us with some kind of half-assed challenge.

What [DE]Steve said in the Devstream yesterday seriously concerned me.  I paraphrase but he doesn't want enemies to be as strong as us (not that anyone is asking for that) and so he wants us to be OP.  He must really want us to be OP if he's using a straw man argument.

Thing is, once the mass CC powers are fixed, DE can provide challenge easily.  It's literally adding one more planet, making up some node names, putting a few numbers in a table and giving us a reason to go there.

Why won't they do it?

Warframe has begun to get press for its continued success. 

Game development is a copycat industry.

Sooner or later what you predict will happen. And when it does, I will be among the first to give the new, better balanced game a try.

[BuddaOfLife]

Thx for the thread and i totally agree

I hate sorties and that silly formorian thing, i dont do the 8 man special stuff either.

I have no interest in facing down Lvl 100 + bombards etc, and the few sorties i have done were ridiculous with 20 nullifier bubbles at once and it was just daft.

And lvl 100s they are ridiculous dont just chuck another million life on them and make there weapons x4 to ours to create them, the scaling is stupid.

I have said often they need to make team play a thing for the bigger stuff so we all have a part to play in getting the job done.

We all have frames why not use the damn things instead of discarding them all for the 6 that can be used for end game. Make it so you need an ember and a hydroid and something else to create an effect that gives you the winning edge maybe 3 frames together nulls nullifiers? that kind of stuff.

Use the abilities together to create higher level powers that work for different things/levels

Stop becoming only people with money or no life can get the frames..

I work and have a life and i cant waste it all sitting in warframe doing rotation C all the time, neither can i spend £93 on a frame..

 

As to DE your are on a tipping point atm, you have just reached that critical point where the playerbase is getting really dissatisfied and the bad press about the game is beginning to mount.

Please for the sake of the game stop listening to the Chinese overlords orders and stick to what you do making games..

Their money only approach will kill this game in a matter of months.. There are enough games failing atm for the same reason Firefall/BDO etc, 

If on the other hand its your decisions that are changing the game atm then please listen to the community they are shouting about the state of the game and your not listening as far as we can see.

 

Lets hope you change path and keep the game alive

 

 

 

 

[Hope42]

I totaly agree with this letter.

For me most changes are more kind of fun and made me laugh. I dont know what dev's want. They give us this sorty with lvl 100 Mobs millions of resis and at the hard side every enemy is a eximus. On one side they bring in content that is ONLY beatable with the right setup and then on the other side they try to destroy this setups.

I simply do not see where they want to go. The biggest problem is. Shield and live is complete useless above lvl 60+. Even overshielded with 2250 you get onehittet by every second mob. So you play without shield and live and go to the invul stuff and this is what makes the game lame.

And so far i do not pay any cent anymore. But this is the only way they will learn. Getting no money will show them they are going the wrong way.

Edited May 28, 2016 by Hope42

[Sm0kiT]

24 minutes ago, BuddaOfLife said:

As to DE your are on a tipping point atm, you have just reached that critical point where the playerbase is getting really dissatisfied and the bad press about the game is beginning to mount.

Please for the sake of the game stop listening to the Chinese overlords orders and stick to what you do making games..

Their money only approach will kill this game in a matter of months.. There are enough games failing atm for the same reason Firefall/BDO etc, 

If on the other hand its your decisions that are changing the game atm then please listen to the community they are shouting about the state of the game and your not listening as far as we can see.

Yes, thank you for pointing that out. Firefall is a perfect example of this alarming trend. But I still believe that the community (especially the WF community which is great) has the power to shift it into the right direction, or better to say the community has the power to encourage DE to make this game awesome (again) and let it stand out among all the other mediocre F2P games for many years to come.

[Cygnus718]

Quote

As to DE your are on a tipping point atm, you have just reached that critical point where the playerbase is getting really dissatisfied and the bad press about the game is beginning to mount.

I don't agree that "the bad press about the game is beginning to mount", that's nonsense - Warframe has been very successful as of late.

That being said, I do believe that enemy scaling is a problem, and that Warframe frequently utilizes lazy methods of providing difficulty. These methods end up provoking constant cheese from the players. Unfortunately, it would be quite a large undertaking to rework enemy scaling - it would probably require a rework of damage again as well.

Edited May 28, 2016 by Cygnus718

[Nesit1]

Nerfs are okay, and this topic is okay.
Why people are sad right now - because this kind of missions are actually harder. Did LoR became harder because of that? No, EV trin is still there, and there are tones of CC frames to provide help, not that bad.

I agree, that "end-game difficulty" should be adjusted (talking only about sorties and raids), but those warframe changes are required as well.

So there are 2 things to do:

• Nerf enemies. (oneshotting isn't fun)
• Nerf warframes. (pressXtowin isn't fun)

DE started from second task, do you think they forgot about first one? I don't think so. Just wait and see what'll happen in future. Rework of enemy scalings is currently in progress, so it'll take some time. 

[Huone]

6 minutes ago, Nesit1 said:

Nerfs are okay, and this topic is okay.
Why people are sad right now - because this kind of missions are actually harder. Did LoR became harder because of that? No, EV trin is still there, and there are tones of CC frames to provide help, not that bad.

I agree, that "end-game difficulty" should be adjusted (talking only about sorties and raids), but those warframe changes are required as well.

So there are 2 things to do:

• Nerf enemies. (oneshotting isn't fun)
• Nerf warframes. (pressXtowin isn't fun)

DE started from second task, do you think they forgot about first one? I don't think so. Just wait and see what'll happen in future. Rework of enemy scalings is currently in progress, so it'll take some time. 

They also need to buff/rework all the useless MR fodder weapons and frames. This is a PVE game. The computer-controlled enemies aren't going to complain.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

13 minutes ago, Nesit1 said:

Nerfs are okay, and this topic is okay.
Why people are sad right now - because this kind of missions are actually harder. Did LoR became harder because of that? No, EV trin is still there, and there are tones of CC frames to provide help, not that bad.

I agree, that "end-game difficulty" should be adjusted (talking only about sorties and raids), but those warframe changes are required as well.

So there are 2 things to do:

• Nerf enemies. (oneshotting isn't fun)
• Nerf warframes. (pressXtowin isn't fun)

DE started from second task, do you think they forgot about first one? I don't think so. Just wait and see what'll happen in future. Rework of enemy scalings is currently in progress, so it'll take some time. 

NM LoR got harder but the worst one is Jordas. Have fun being the guys outside playing hockey with the spores without Blessing, while the Golem shoots at you. And while people wait for the damage fixes, they will play other games. It would've been much smarter to playtest it all extensively and release it all together.

Edited May 28, 2016 by Zilchy

[Nesit1]

1 minute ago, Zilchy said:

NM LoR got harder but the worst one is Jordas. Have fun being the guys outside playing hockey with the spores without Blessing, while the Golem shoots at you. And while people wait for the damage fixes, they will play other games. It would've been much smarter to playtest it all extensively and release it all together.

Smarter? Hell no.

Nothing is perfect, and our job (as testers) is to find "what is wrong" in those reworks. Earlier release - earlier we find "things to fix" - earlier things are "fixed.

Talking about Jordas.., well, I actually didn't find AW part of JV to be hard in terms of enemy damage, but yeah, there is support Archwing to be developed, so she'll take Trinity's place in space. 

[Flirk2]

Tried out a couple of frames after the last update.

Mesa got an ultimate that now actually does damage. Nice. If only it could target the nullifiers, even to burst their bubble by shooting repeatedly. And if only her shield was any good against explosions. Because now you are a stationary target for bombards while using your ultimate ability and you have to deactivate it to deal with nullifiers... So Mesa is still too clunky to use for me.

Volt got a great CC with his discharge now. Shame about nullifiers and the fact that ospreys sneer on the electric proc and fire at you regardless:

Spoiler

that's on t1s...

Mag is now duration/range based. So no 200ps going to happen. She is now useful against everything but infested.... But again, nullifiers would ruin the day. As you set up those magnetize things and can't soot past them. Then a nullifier walks over them and dispels everything all the while shielding other units from you...

Valkyr's Hysteria is now more dangerous to her then her enemies past level 50. Because what was a small distance that you had to clear from enemies to get out of Hysteria safely is now just 20 meters. While affinity is shared for 50 and that's considered huge by the devs in the latest devstream... I guess Hysteria is now a built-in life strike and not even emergency tool. As if you get too much damage while under it's effect you are going to die when it ends. There is no way to guarantee you got away from every enemy in 20 meter radius when there are usually about 1 enemy per 10 square meters minimum, and they could spawn at that distance. In the void higher then t1 you'll get nullifiers to kill the mood. Corpus has those, scrambus (and good luck staying 20 meters away from everything and avoiding those at the same time while in Hysteria), isolator bursa to get you killed by accumulated damage. Infested have Ancient Disruptors that already could dispel your hysteria by stealing your energy in one hit.

And I still see people defending those nerfs. Just why are there people who dislike it when others have fun so much, I wonder?

 

It seems to me that all the testing was done with t1. There is nothing to address overlapping nullifier bubbles, ancient disruptors and healers, scrambus and isolator bursa in these reworks. And really. If you look at level 30 as a balancing point, then everything is fine. But then why would you introduce sorties and endless modes?

 

[haloamted]

 

8 hours ago, ZaeXithos said:

Okay DE.

 *Truth*

This is how you make good gameplay.

Applauds~

Edited May 28, 2016 by haloamted
Too big quote of truth

[LeaserResael]

+1

And I want to add that they talk about abilities making content trivial, but I never see them talking about how you need to repeat a mission a hundred times in order to get the part you want. How the reward tables are intentionally put the way they are, how they always say "We want to reduce the grind" and the next thing they do is put 30k cryotic weapons, 20 nitain and 9k Vauban parts, everything now needs another weapon to craft, 2 argon, 5 nitain and of course the drop % are ridiculous to begin with.

They can make those drop tables so low but then we're not allowed to use what we have to complete missions faster? I don't even do constant excavation runs or draco, or viver when it was a thing, and I don't have any problem with the people that do. I really don't care how other people play the game. But I always end up being affected the most when DE goes and nerfs things to the ground as a response to those people and it makes the game more tedius for me because I didn't do those maps when they were a thing.
Why? Playing a game is supposed to be a fun thing, it should be fun, not frustrating work. Doing more than 75+ keys to get only 2 Vauban Prime parts and nothing else is simply stupid. But then "we" are the ones trivializing content, not DE making it near impossible to get that content on the first place...

The whole appeal of the game is to "be a space ninja killing thousands and thousands of enemies". If I wanted to play a super balanced game I wouldn't be playing Warframe at all, I would be playing other games.
They say they listen to people's feedback but then they go and release passives and everything else without any of the proposed changes. There's hardly ANY compensation for the people that invest both TIME AND MONEY taking their frames and weapons into a place were they are happy. Then, from one moment to the next those things get nerfed and YOUR time and YOUR money was wasted and you're not getting anything in return.

If you want players to respect you and give you money, you need to respect players too, respect their time and the money they spend on your game.
And no, "it's still in beta" doesn't count, the game is not in beta even if they still say it is. That's an excuse they'll keep using to protect themselves from any change they do to the game.