Nothing is slowing anyone down except their inability to fight without ability spam.

There is no way Bungie will make any significant mode use the hardware modifier for anything but a single weekend or week. Abilities can be very annoying to play against, especially when a player knows how to exploit them, but at the end of the day, they’re an integral component of Destiny’s core gameplay identity. No chance bungie compromises that in attempt to “balance” the notoriously impossible to balance crucible. Checkmate throttles spam and rewards use of primary weapons (unfortunately promoting teamshots) Hardware strips a pillar of gameplay from the crucible entirely. There’s no comparison beyond them both being modifiers.