I for one disagree with you. I like having actual upgrades and actually getting better gear and the ilvl system is more modern and works better because they don't want to raise the cap past 99. It feels like the power of your character goes up as you get higher level gear and you actually see noticeable performance increases. Every mmo these days uses a ilvl system because it just works for gear progression. I don't mind replacing all my gear because it means I actually get to do something, work toward farming another gear set.

Sidegrades like they done in the past seemed pretty pointless when all this gear was released that wasn't much of an upgrade. Often players would avoid doing a lot of new content because they were sidegrades and didn't offer any advantages over what they have now. Limbus 2 / Odin 2 is an example of sidegrades that most of the community ignored.