Macro is hard. It’s really, really, really hard.
It’s _really easy_ to write down a moderately realistic macro model which you have absolutely no hope of ever solving numerically (an “extremely realistic model” would be even worse). That’s not going to do anyone any good.
It would be a totally empty exercise: “here’s something which I bet would be great but we’ll never know!”. It’s impossible to confront such models with data, which is absolutely the bread and butter of any macro paper.
It is still hard but somewhat less hard to write down a simplified model which you can solve and which can give you insights. By necessity you lose some realism in this exercise. There is no way around that. It’s not a lack of cleverness or imagination.
It is possible to confront such models with data to make the whole exercise empirical, which credible macro is and must be.
By necessity these insights might be useful or not depending on how much of the useful machinery of realism you dropped from your model to make it solvable.
If you personally want something “better”, you are welcome to try. I encourage you! If you show that your method works - that it involves plausible assumptions, can be solved, and can be made empirical - the macroeconomists of the world will beat a path to your door and gladly study your methods.
The exercise not a charade. There are currently no alternatives to mainstream empirical macro bc all of the purported alternatives are (for lack of a better word) complete BS (example: MMT).