I remember following the game with optimism until FPS combat was announced.

I expressed my fears of feature creep an a massive increase in development time on forums and was dismissed by fans as "it's just a small detail" and "the underlying engine supports it".

It's naive to think adding seamless fps to a game of this scale wouldn't massively increase complexity. And if it's just a small detail perhaps it isn't worth it.

As for the backers I see lots of Post-purchase rationalization: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-purchase_rationalizatio...