Season 2 messed up all our maxed out gear. Maxed out gear in season 2 will give you a score of 144 in green writing. I assume this is gonna be the new gear level in season 3 meaning that each season our gear becomes useless due to the introduction of higher gear. Ubisoft can do that indefinitely while scaling lower gear back. So why even bother upgrading orange gear if it only gives you a marginal bonus and becomes useless next season?
What would you rather them do instead? If you could just upgrade your old gear, you would just do that and be at max level five minutes into the new season if you saved up your steel, and you would never need the new gear unless you wanted to change the look (if they let you do that since technically your old gear is a different rarity).