The treasure hoards for Levels 0-4 are pretty stingy - unless the party pools all their money towards gearing a single PC.
The 5-11 hoards will give more gold, so likely by level 6 the party should have enough money for everyone that wants plate to get it.
The system works for me and my group, and thousands of other groups. Lots of people like attrition play and don't want to see it reworked. Your perspective isn't universal.
I really hope that the new crafting rules don't allow players to effectively freely pick the magic items they want. There's too many magic items which break things to allow players to choose items off the complete list.
Jeremy should have kept up the position rather than caving to internet rules-lawyers less than a year into the game release. By releasing Sage Advice wotc legitimized and encouraged toxic rule-lawyers and set them up as a clear audience their products must cater to.
D&D 2024 is clearly...
Crawford's approach to 5e since 2015 has been empowering rules lawyers and clinging to the exact RAW instead of encouraging common sense and table rulings or clarifying design intent.
D&D2024 will double down on this approach with Crawford instead of Mearls as the primary project lead.
There's more to encounters than draining party resources and causing attrition. There's more to encounters than being tactically challenging. You can still make encounters interesting even if the party is doing less than one encounter per day.