I personally wouldn't mind if they just removed the score bonuses for using new gear. The damage/dr buffs aren't super noticeable especially if you aren't using higher tiered loot. The volatile mods are super cool and we had similar mods last season. Out of the hundreds of missions I've done since the dlc dropped, I've only used avant guard less than 10 times including all conquests and multiple cutting edge games. There's just no reason to pick it in custom modifiers when equipment lock gives double the multiplier and is less restrictive. As far as I'm aware it never shows up in matchmade activities either. Also I genuinely wouldn't lose sleep if they removed the featured gear system entirely tho. Clearly a large amount of players dislike it including cc's