It's not akin to that at all, because the wheel isn't wobbly at all. It's akin to saying, "no, the wheel isn't wobbly."
Darkvision is simpler than having multiple types of special vision, and makes running the game smoother.
Further, the thing you claim it takes away is, IMO, rather questionable.
If you were saying "you've been attacked" in older editions, you were running stealth and ambushes incorrectly, so far as I can remember. At least in 2e and 3/.5e, you still had to roll to sneak up on someone. In 3/.5e there was a whole skill for it, called Move Silently. There was no, "they can't see me, therefor they cannot even roll to possibly perceive me in any way."
Add to that, groups should still be using torches in 5e, because having disadvantage in darkness still sucks quite a bit. If a DM is handwaving that, that's on them, not the rules. Groups should also have generally had torches in older editions, unless they all had Darkvision, in which case the enemy might as well have been trying to ambush the group in full daylight. With torches, they still had a limited scope of visibility, but at least they weren't literally blind, risking falling into a pit at every turn.
So, what has been taken away is...parties somehow navigating in total blindness through dangerous territory? Seriously?
Have you really found humans to not be feasible? Do you not see humans, dragonborn, and halflings in your games? We know from an immense data set that the majority of groups don't have that problem.