I suspect that deeper inspection would confirm that dissatisfcation with the frequency, predictability, scale, and nature of intermittent rewards is a HUGE part of what makes some games work or not with specific groups.

One of the things that bugged me (and a lot of other, I gather) about SotC-era Fate, for example, is the fact that the rewards were pinging at a really good rate, and were very predictable, but the rewards themselves weren’t very good. Like playing the penny slots, I guess. Meanwhile, over many years and iterations of D&D, you can see that the uniformity crowd has won out, with the idea of “you will level up every X sessions, regardless of what level you are at” growing a lot of traction.

This is also why I burned out on MMOs in a big way: the first handful of levels go by so fast that they might as well be flat, and then after a while (around level 40 in WoW, back when I played) the reward valve gets pinched so tight that I completely lose interest.