The devs have to balance/shape the base game around what they want the average player that is aiming to acquire legendary items to experience. In this case they felt like this player was missing out on potentially interesting build puzzles. By removing this obvious global minimum in the build space, a rich field local minima builds appears in its place which makes the legendary puzzle a harder and more varied challenge.

You can still get your preferred play style with a mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/bring-back-space-casino