Replacing spawn weapons

What I am missing is a valid reason to drastically change the spawn weapons in the first place. We just built up a player base, managed to attract a reasonable amount of Nexuiz players even though some of them still have concerns about Xonotic gameplay, and now we are planning to fundamentally change one of the core elements of Xonotic/Nexuiz gameplay, the laser.

I think it's very likely, if not obvious, that this will lead to disapproval by a lot of people that are actually playing this game at this moment. What reasons are there that outweigh the disadvantages of redesigning core elements of gameplay?