I was playing a random game on Flash Game License, it was a fun concept, very nice graphics and music. The controls felt very, very, sluggish and unresponsive.
Of course, the game has a shop, where you spend your experience points to buy better movement.
So from one standpoint, when you make a game, you want to create very nice gamefeel.
In the MDA list of game aesthetics, discovery is a valuable element in a game. And there’s something to be said for discovering new capabilities as you “upgrade” or whatever in the game.
But those two elements come into conflict, where people make games where you have deliberately poor gamefeel to ensure that you have room to grow when you upgrade. And when I’m being cynical I think people put upgrades in their game because they haven’t got any better ideas.