Honestly if they didn’t go so overboard on some of the nerfs people wouldn’t have cared as much and would’ve continued playing. Like the grenade pistol rework was not that bad and actually made it better in some ways. But most of the other nerfs weren’t justified. For example the flamer was good for keeping enemies at bay but its reload time, slow aiming speed and limited range made it so that there was an actual risk meaning you couldn’t just solo any but that jumped at you.

There were also alot of duct tape solution nerfs like the railgun and eruptor which were bugged(both did way more damage than they actually should’ve) and instead of fixing them they just removed/nerfed crucial aspects to how they work. Because of all of that alot of guns were rarely if ever used, with people sticking to a few select weapons and not experimenting at all since most weapons would never be as effective as the meta weapons people would use.