They went to a great deal of effort to create this system of rewards and upgrades, with lots of restrictions that mean it will hardly affect anyone and even most of those will get less benefit than they had hoped.
That’s how vendors are now. That’s how band-aid fixes work. If you never met a system you didn’t like, you’re probably really happy. You probably love the valor system that requires you to get an increasing amount of effort into getting the same ksm achievement each patch, by which time you don’t need the upgrades.
Call it whatever you feel the need to. I personally don’t think anybody who was asking for any sort of gear vendor or bad luck protection was thinking of something this convoluted. But if you like convoluted systems, you’re probably in heaven.