I think Styg is planning something for Infusion and the last set of game updates have been about transitioning the gameplay towards the next iteration of the UnderRail system. A lot of the changes won't make a lot of sense until you see how the future gameplay will work. A clear trend seems to be about tying every playstyle to the game's economic system and making buying and crafting more important.
He actually made lots of uniques more viable as an alternative to crafted weapons. They are reall strong. Maybe not "optimal" but strong.
Despite being primarily a Guns player, I am ok with the change. But I'm also one of those players that doesn't enjoy the overpowered god-like builds. I appreciate it's a lot of fun two turning the final boss, even though that isn't my thing, so I can see why some other players would get irritated with any kind of nerf to a playstyle they prefer.
I personally can't play those knife-edge SI builds, where 1 mistake or bad roll screws you over. I prefer optimizing for lazy / easy to play with / capable of most content, builds. To each his own. But if you looked at the coments, most of people posting builds agree with these nerfs.
However, Infusion has to sell copies and I will bet the changes are about increasing the number and kinds of players who can enjoy the game. It probably also is about moving away from having to finely balance all the different builds as it probably slows down content creation enormously (just judging from comments by Styg about how long it took to get the handful of new Expedition weapons to fit into the game properly). The exact issue of "my playstyle isn't as strong as all the other ones!" has probably reduced the amount of actual content we have to play with for the same development time. Just food for thought.
Game has not gained the mainstream appeal, thats for sure. But it is an indie title and PC Only and while it is hard, it doesn't have the mainsteam appeal of Dark Souls. Even a ton of classic Fallout fans don't know about it, and if not for Sseth, I don't think I would either.
The game is great though, and Styg is awesome for making it. I wish him all the best with next title too! 😄 Because we need more things in our lives like it 😊