As in just the favoured enemy & favoured terrain you mean? Compared to favoured foe and deft explorer?
I agree the latter are more generically useful. I still think there's a place for the former options depending on the campaign and story style, but that requires a degree of cooperation with the GM. Especially for the favoured terrain as exploration is often a pillar that gets glossed over, especially with all the features that trivialise surviving the wilds (looking at you Outlander background, and to a lesser extent Goodberry). For it to be a fun feature I think it needs to have up and downtime, anything that's permanently on risks being forgotten rather than being "aha, my character has got this!"
In general though, I'd agree putting the usefulness of a feature in the hands of the GM rather than the player is poor design.
As for favoured enemy Vs favoured foe, I think the former has way more flavour, but again requires some kind of cooperation with the GM to make sure you're not picking something useless