Hate to make a burger analogy, it makes me feel American, but it is a pretty efficient way to get my point across.
People have to understand when others criticise
a core feature of the game, you can't tell them to just "not use it", because it's a CORE feature.
if someone says "I don't like the way the entire game revolves around armor" you can't tell them to not use it… because they just said the entire game revolves around it…
or "just disable damage numbers and score numbers" doesn't work for some people because all the visual feedback and satisfaction of points would be completely removed. In older games the score numbers would still be there just in the corner of your screen, still providing visual feedback just not crowding the middle of your screen.
The game wasn't designed around these things being disabled/not utilised, so they deserve to be fully criticised/praised by the community. And even if they weren't integral to the game, why can't we comment on things in the product we purchased? Can we not do that?
A feature better to use this response to is definitely gobblegums. These games were definitely made with the idea that they would not be needed to have fun in the game, and because of that, yes, I won't use gobblegums if I don't want to. Worst Id say it got was immolation for the box in rev and I don't think that was that bad (I just think the entire EE was ass lol). I didn't use a single mega to complete the EEs in BO6. Rather than the meat of the burger, gobbles were a seasoning which some thought overpowered the entire meal so opt to not have it.
So people don't want things removed, they want them changed. They didn't say they wanted a pizza with nothing. Thus, not interacting with it entirely would be the worst outcome for them. I think some people think when others are complaining about a feature they are literally are dying inside every time they use it. Like no, they don't play the game 10 hours a day crying at armor plates, they haven't played the game in weeks and are just giving feedback by trying to explain why lol.
And this isn't a modern zombies criticism. This is a modern discussion criticism. If someone said "just don't use the shield" on origins I would have equal problem with that. I despise the exaggerated hate for zombies games and the exaggerated defending against valid criticism of said games equally 🫶