This strong veering towards reduced complexity is very odd, and it's consistent throughout all the things cut or systematically stripped, whether we're talking the attributes, various sub-systems (or lack thereof) or the armor system.
Maybe you're looking in the wrong direction; perhaps, it's more because the framework is sound but the implementation of it wasn't that we ended up with the system that we have.
Perhaps the implementation required far more resources than there was available at the time to bring up the overall experience for certain players to be 'acceptable'.
Who knows?
What I do know is that blaming the armor system as you guys have done over and over without accounting or assigning blame to other things as well makes a tired and most likely incorrect line of thinking.
The discussions here show that almost no one bothers to reach in and figure out what the optimal version of this system looks like and that everything around and about is a knee jerk reaction.
The debates over rng vs not is pretty stupid too because it skirts the issue and is a red herring.
