Welcome to Malifaux, were bad things happen. To address your first concern about the card mechanics I think you will find as with all of us the card mechanics are well balanced and with its resource management it provides wonderful layers to the game. I much prefer it to dice mechanics, and I think there are many here who would say the same. There is a bit of a learning curve initially but that passes quickly.
Now for the quality of the game. I think your impression is spot on. They came out with a second edition when it was needed to rebalance the system.addimg some mechanics to provide a more seamless transition to those changes going forward. They come out with a regular erreta and FAQ, to address changes to models and so on. Along with that you have an annual release of Gaining Grounds which is the tournament rules to to be followed with changes to the new strategies and schemes which keeps the game from becoming stale and often helps to address the one and only winning combination as it were. All in all not everything has been a landsliding success but they address things regularly which to me is all I could ask. I continue to have fun with each game I play. At the end of the day that is all you have to measure if the game is worth it or not.