3e and Pathfinder have a ton of special actions all warriors can take. Disarm, Sunder, Trip, and (in PF1), things like push, drag, steal and Dirty Trick. Most of the time, players don't take those actions.
Part of this is yes, those editions made these maneuvers difficult without specialization. But the other part is, you give up an attack (or sometimes all attacks) to impose a status ailment on the target. Sometimes, like Disarm or Sunder, this can be a very good status ailment, but many times, it's not.
And giving up damage when, as many people say "the best status effect is Dead", is problematic. That's why Battlemasters spend a resource to do their thing, and still be able to deal their damage. If everyone could do this without spending a resource, and just spam "frightening strikes", that is exactly what they would do, and 5e isn't built to let non spellcasters have at-will damaging debuffs; indeed, a vocal group during the playtest specifically did not want this, instead wanting the Fighter of old, the heavy armored, tough, weapon damage dealer with no fancy moves or "magical" abilities (however you define such).
