Some of that may have had to do with the resolution they expected the game to run at.
It's likely not a coincidence that BioWare's last genuinely good UI was in their last game not to support 480p.
15 years ago.
Simple lists are fine with me, especially if you can break them down in categories.
If I can sort the lists manually, and assign the categories myself, sure.
Right. The vanilla game ME2 weapon balance regime was the best from this standpoint since only the "advanced weapons" were clearly upgrades from the other ones (ignoring Mantis ammo). DLC broke this rule to an extent, but that is pretty much always going to be the case for paid DLC.
I hate this about paid DLC. The addition of OP gear like that damages replayability of the core game. This actually discourages me from buying DLC.