My biggest issue with character progression is that the only way most characters progress on a game is through xp and stats.
XP and stats should not be the only way a character progresses. There should be other achievables like rank or resources or territory or a combination of all of them that allows a character to progress without simply racking up xp and spending it.
If people had more objectives to achieve besides MOAR XP, then a game wouldn’t need to give out so much xp per week to keep people interested and uber stats become much less of a problem.
But handing out scads of xp is the easy, traditional solution. It takes very little monitoring and is often completely automated. So that’s what most games do.
Not saying that is bad or wrong, just that it really puts the burden of character progression on xp if that’s all the game has.