As other people say in this thread it's all about them being mechanically meaningful. I love playing Path of Exile because my build feels completely different when I'm on day 2 gear vs when I've been playing for a few weeks and I have very good items. Because it actually feels straight up better: having more projectiles, being able to tank huge hits that killed me when I was weaker, killing tough bosses in a few seconds; actual stuff I can see with my eyes. Getting a small DPS upgrade that is really just keeping up with enemy HP inflation is completely useless, it just makes numbers bigger without changing anything about how you play. Even worse, games where the DPS upgrades don't match how much higher the enemy HP gets will force you to stop your progression and go grind rare upgrades/straight up pay for better stats like Gacha games just to keep going through the game at a smooth pace.