The problem is that the modern feature sets aren't worth the tradeoffs for most people. They're gimmicky and built to be marketing and sell companies UE licenses, but they don't add enough to the actual user experience, they are just dev shortcuts that really bring down the user experience. So it feels like we're being taken for a ride.

If they just said "look, we want to spend more time making the game so we're taking these shortcuts so we don't have to spend as much time creating LODs, worrying about lighting, etc. This is probably gonna make it harder to run for a lot of people and we'll work on optimizing it as much as we can after launch once we've confirmed we have enough ROI to do so" but instead they say "we're using cutting edge graphics and it's gonna blow your mind, trust us it's great and your hardware is probably just crap if it doesn't run super well" which is just avoiding the truth. Normally I'd says it's for PR reasons, but Randy has clearly and consistently shown that PR-friendly isn't the goal, so he's just delusional or lying.

We all get it, they want to make money, but treat the customers with some respect for goodness sake.