Honestly, all this talk about ship designs is for me a background issue. The screenplay is broken. If the story had been amazing and the characters had been as engaging as they were in OT, then honestly we may have been more forgiving of these ship designs, because holy crap that was a great story.

If the story had sucked in ESB, I would have complained about how stupid of a design the ATAT's were. I mean who creates tanks on legs that can easily be tripped? Not to mention that when they are in this "tripped" state their armor is no longer too strong for blasters and can be blown to bits.

Fix the story, then a lot is forgivable.