It's how game productions go tbh. You iterate over your designs until you're happy with them.
I'm happy with the core mechanics now though. I wanna tweak how stamina works soon but that's the last thing in my list. After that there shouldn't be that many drastic changes to how the flow of combat and progression works.
Cheers.
Maybe I just don't usually actually play games continuously throughout their early development, so I don't see the process. I think most of the time those decisions are made before any sort of public release. What I'm more used to is a developer going on hiatus because they didn't like the direction it was going, and taking time off to make a decision before releasing a single full overhaul.
Perhaps this is how it should be done, but if that is the case, then the vast majority of designers and game companies don't do it correctly.
From my perspective... the people who are following a game through its development probably don't want to suddenly be playing a different game, else they very likely wouldn't have been interested in the game initially. Like me, I enjoyed this game in previous iterations. I completely lost interest and actually uninstalled it for while. Reinstalled it later... played it a bit, but just... wasn't feeling it. Haven't even played the last two versions because the changelog just doesn't grab my interest at all. It's changing core mechanics that I had already grown accustomed to, and I don't want to play a completely different game than the one I initially downloaded and liked.
Perhaps I wouldn't notice and would still enjoy the game if I hadn't played the older versions, since I wouldn't have grown accustomed to them.