Your premise here is that if a "layman" like myself is unable to design a superior product as compared to a professional, than that professional is beyond criticism. I believe that is a fundamentally flawed argument. Now I have purchased said product, as I had neither the time, desire, and/or skill to craft my own....but as a customer I maintain my right to complain about certain aspects of that product.
No, you have no right to complain, you were the one who decided to purchase that product, knowing that there is so much material and reviews out there that there is no excuse for not knowing the spirit in which it was produced. See below about further explanations.
There are many aspects of 5e I quite enjoy, but as compared to my experiences with the last two systems....its encounter designs are quite poor for the games that I run. Your notion that I run my games significantly outside the boundaries of the system is part of my problem...my players are not dripping with magic items, chock full of feats, nor are they an army of min/maxxers....and yet I find I am having to go completely outside the lines to provide them fundamental challenge. After running 3 full campaigns in 5e, this remains my most common criticism of the system as compared to its predecessors.
And it's not the same system at all, neither is it designed along the same lines: "The DM is key. Many unexpected things can happen in
a D&D campaign, and no set of rules could reasonably account for every contingency. If the rules tried to do so, the game would become unplayable. An alternative would be for the rules to severely limit what characters can do, which would be counter to the open-endedness of D&D. The direction we chose for the current edition was to lay a foundation of rules that a DM could build on, and we embraced the
DM’s role as the bridge between the things the rules address and the things they don’t."
This is from the SAC, which is a free publication, and which tells you exactly, without any ambiguity whatsoever, that the 5e designers will not be producing an exhaustive product taking into account all contingencies (3e, obviously), and neither will they restrict the choices of the players (4e obviously), and that the DM will need to do some work to bridge the gap.
It continuously amazes me that people who prefer previous versions (for what is usually very good reasons considering the games that they want to run) absolutely want to run 5e, but still continue to complain about it not meeting their expectations when the product tells you, up front, that it is different.
It's exactly like purchasing a ferrari for its speed and then complaining that it does not work well offroad. Do you see that having a lot of traction with Ferrari designers ?
And once more, in addition to the designers' intent, the fact is that what you are looking for is impossible to do. If it was possible to do something of the kind, don't you think that someone would have very successfully marketed something in DM"s Guild for example ?
So I'm not asking you to design it yourself, it's impossible to design anyway, but why don't you respect the fact that the designers had other intents, that they did a brilliant job with this intent (5e is so far beyond the success of anything in the hobby in 50 years), and that, in any case, criticism will lead you absolutely nowhere ? What's the point of it ?
But there are other solutions, see below.
Not everyone of course will agree with that based on their own table experiences, hence why most of these debates ultimately end in stalemate.
It's not the real reason, and there is no debate, as there is simply no solution, as demonstrated above. I'm not debating here, I'm not arguing that 5e is perfect, I'm just trying to open your eyes on the futility of that criticism.
Fundamentally convincing people that their table experience is truly unique and rare compared to most is a trying exercise at best.
And this is not what I'm doing, your table experience is critical for you, "What you see is all there is", of course. What I'm telling you, though, is that wishing for more than what is in the DMG is utterly futile, it's not going to happen, and no one is going to help you with something that is impossible to do in terms of general rules that will satisfy everyone.
So if you want something more precise, do it, for your table and your characters. It's much easier than doing the impossible, i.e. doing it in a general way for all the manners of playing out there. But play 5e in its avowed spirit, bridge the gap at your table, I'm sure that you can do it, and no-one can do it for you.
What we can do for you here is give you hints, but for that, we need information about your campaign, precise information and not things like "the encounter builder stinks" or "we are awesome players for crushing deadly encounters with our level 3 characters". But people usually get vexed when we are just trying to help them figure whether the common reasons (non-standard characters, single encounters nova, specific situations, underpowered monsters for their CR or being used in very bad circumstances for them, etc.) apply to their games.
Just so that you know, at our tables, we also run specific types of games. They are very narrativist, and we have very few fights. Friday evening, in our last game, there were a few armies fighting (they used some of their sappers and special troops to clear laval tubes in Avernus to be able to flank a siege situation between armies of Zariel, Bel and Graz'zt), but after that it was mostly embassies, spying and diplomacy and there was not a single fight, although spells and abilities were certainly used.
So when we have fights, they are usually isolated affairs, and there is always the risk to run nova. In Odyssey of the Dragonlord, I play a paladin, if I go nova and use all my smites in one combat, it is extremely unbalanced. So the DM designs fights specifically for that, for example uses mythic encounter bosses with multiple phases so that it feels like a boss fight. Or there is always the threat that the fight will not be the only one, or we use "weakening" encounters that we do not play with guards and such that arbitrarily remove some resources from the characters to speed up play, etc.
And we NEVER have a problem, if the fight is too easy, it's because we are heroes, if the fight is to tough, we retreat, negotiate, run away, etc. It's all part of the story.
We believe these are fairly non-standard games, but we've been playing that way ever since BECMI actually, through every edition and without a problem, because we know that the rulebooks never tell you the whole thing (except in 4e where they tell you everything that there is to know, but force you to play that way, which did not suit us despite other qualities of the edition), so we had to adapt every single time.
But it's the nature of the game, please don't feel entitled to anything not in the book, roll up your sleeves, there are lots of people willing to help you if you present your problems with the right attitude. But complaining and criticising will not put people like us in a good mood, if you see what I mean, it is so destructive and contrary to the spirit of the game....
To your magic item question, most of my experience has been with adventure league. In every adventure I have gotten to play in (which I think is now 4 in total), I have received at least 1 magic item. Granted those have normally been utility items not +1 swords, so perhaps you are right that I overestimate the abundance of those items.
AL is a very bizarre environment, honestly, that I have never fully understood. The adventures that I've seen certainly are not that generous, nor are the published modules, especially at low level, where magic items are mostly consumables anyway. But I think you see what I mean when I say that, in any case, these are not extremely game-(un)balancing items.
