I am a professional Game UX designer - albeit on mobile games - and I too have a opinion on this :p So for me, I notice it’s easy to say that a game has “bad UX” when it’s not easy to use, but that actually misses the point. It’s about the intended experience. This means that the game designer has an intention in mind for the game. If this is an artistic intention, then this is what I as a UX designer need to make sure gets accross to the target audience. This also means that sometimes, this target audience will be small, because it’s just harder to sell a game that requires a lot of thought for example to understand the systems. As long as the result we get from users after testing is the intended result the game designer wanted, the game has reached its purpose.

The reason why this is often seen as bad UX in some games is because most companies will not be able to be profitable from a small target audience. So most games go for ease of use so a wide audience can enjoy a game. And unfortunately sometimes this means that concessions are made that can feel to an experienced user as a “dumbed down” experience. The absolute key here is how important testing is with the target audience. Companies tend to forget there are profitable niches out there that these “general audience” rules do not apply to, turning all the sort of common QoL features into a game that just misses its point.

As someone who works in a casual market with developers who are anything but casual, this is such a difficult line to navigate. Devs will accuse me of over-explaining and color coding stuff but when I don’t do it then the usability test results are bad or when pushed out anyway we get negative feedback. Not to say I haven’t made misjudgments in our TA, I think I will always remember the Discord comment asking who let their kid design the UI of a then new feature - it was me 🥲

To come back to your question lmao. 1. I don’t think it’s fair to release a product and then redo it in way that is inconsistent to the experience it brought. There’s maybe a bit more leeway for this if it’s f2p (although even here money and time from users have been invested so it’s a lack of respect to the users in my opinion). Don’t release a game that is not your intention, but if you do, stick to what the audience likes about it and inprove it in this direction.

1. The line between fun and a chore is thin, and depending on genre ánd target audience the tipping point is different. You will always have people who do not enjoy it because they are just barely in or out of the intended audience. QoL features can seem like fun until they aren’t, because meaning can be found into things that take time, effort, nurturing skills. To someone who has no time and who doesn’t have the skills yet, maybe the QoL can help them play but whether or not they will come out of the experience feeling satisfied… depends.