A guy on CloudyNights torched my Andromeda edit, and he was dead right

Ngl I posted my first real Andromeda shot last month after 4 hours of stacking and thought it was fire, then a user called it out for looking like a purple smear with no core detail. He said my 30 second subs at ISO 3200 were blowing out the middle of the galaxy before I even had a chance to stretch it. I was mad for about a day, then I actually looked at my histogram and every single sub was pushed way past halfway. So I dropped to ISO 800 and 90 second subs on my next clear night in late March, and the difference in the dust lanes was not even close. Same lens, same tracker, same light pollution, totally different photo just because I quit maxing out my settings. If you got roasted on a forum and it stung, did you change your exposure or just dig in?