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You cannot technically explain yourself out of UX issues, please stop trying. So often I see users bring up UX issues, and programmers then tell them how much work it was to create their product. It doesn't matter how much work it was!! What matters is if your target audience uses it or not.

When a user says: "This is hard to use" your reply should never be "It took me 3 months to build that because library A and library B are so tough to use for reason X and reason Y" It doesn't matter that it's hard. That's the work! That's the effort!! Instead: Listen, and look at what can be done.

I've seen 2 week projects become immensely successful. I've seen 5 year projects fail spectacularly. The time invested into something has barely any relevance to its success. Whether the time was used properly is much more of a positive indication, and only you, the creator, can influence that.

I especially get annoyed at this in game development and linux-like communities. Both are extremely technically difficult, and it's good to share those conversations with each other as we're building. But to users it's the opposite of helpful. You cannot technically explain away UX issues.

You have to face the reality that sometimes you have worked inefficiently and built bad architecture. If you cannot easily resolve the UX issues that more than half of your userbase is asking about, then you have made mistakes in the work. Admit to that, and do better next time, that's iteration.