I've played many of the so-called "worst options" in D&D 5e (e.g. PHB beast master ranger) and found the claims to be unfounded. The characters were fun to play and helped contribute to an exciting, memorable tale.
It is possible to do that while playing a peasant PC.
The character is a tool and the tool is only as good as the player who wields it.
This reads like "I was poor and got rich, so everyone who is poor has only themselves to blame" nonsense.
The Beastmaster ranger, for example, has a problem that people who want to play it tend to like the idea of having a pet; but the class is designed such that the pet is cheap and easy to replace.
This isn't the experience most of the people I've seen playing it want.
What they often end up with is a Ranger with no subclass, because they find that their pet is not strong enough to reliably survive combat. The risk they put their pet in isn't
worth much.
And yes, you can play a Ranger-with-no-subclass and still contribute; you can play a peasant in 5e and still contribute. You just won't be telling a story that many people
want to tell with that PC.
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The design errors include the load on DMs. The Ranger class abilities require a very specific amount of wilderness exploration in the regions that the Ranger is specialized in, and a specific amount outside of it. Too much, and the Ranger's veto makes it boring; too little, and the ability doesn't do anything. Without the contrast, and both look like they do nothing.
The favored enemy has the same issue. The Ranger either has to get lucky with a good pick, they have to coordinate the pick with the DM's plot, or the DM has to coordinate enemies to match the Ranger's class ability (which does nothing and is ignorable if it is ignored).
With favored terrain and favored enemies missing, a beast pet that they are afraid to use (quite legitimately; this is their treasured companion, and it isn't very tough), what we end up with is a Ranger that is a depowered Fighter with a small number of fixed utility spells.
Oh, and its combat spells are almost all concentration based (thus conflict) and/or compete directly with their attack action (and are half-caster power level, so aren't a great trade).
And a pile of other abilities are poorly written as an extra bonus.
All of these things can be mitigated, but they require lots of work by the DM at the table.
Class Feature Variants Ranger options pretty much directly address the majority of these.
The companion becomes a spirit; so "being killed" doesn't
kill it. The favoured foe and terrain become a list of utility spells, one of which reduces the concentration overhead of Hunter's Mark. A bunch of the poorly written abilities are rewritten (like hide in plain sight) with a thematically similar but mechanically better written version.
You end up with a PC that can tell
the same kind of stories, but does it
better. There are some small variations -- the largest one is is the primal spirit replacing the animal companion -- but now everything fits much better.
You go from "here are some mechanics that interact with subsystems many DMs don't use" to "here are some 1/day spells you can cast with explicit effects that match the same theme". From "pick an enemy, hope you get lucky or your DM helps" to "a similar combat boost, but no enemy attached, and fix another mechanical problem". Just a pile of polish.
