I think it goes well beyond aesthetics within game books - and often has a political aspect - the endless thread here about the Demon Type 5 looking less "cheesesnake" is an example ... but that's not the part that gals me.
What I find frustrating is the way there's a conservatism about rules, and the way that newer editions seem to have to have these "ghost rules" in them - ideas that mattered to older editions and a different play style but persist, making things more complex in the present for no benefit. As an example... Did you know 5E has encumbrance, torch burn time and surprise rules? They don't come up in the majority of games, and the mechanics are silly (Torches last 60 minutes, a 5E turn is 1 minute) - putting aside that most 5E PC's can see in the dark or 5e location design favors smaller lairs and encounters over large dungeons (for reasons related to rest and combat mechanics - but I digress) - that's 60 exploration turns to burn down a single torch... you don't need to track that.
The 5E torch rule is a hold over from earlier D&D editions which focused more on dungeon crawling and used "10 minute turns" - so 6 "moves" before your torch burned down. Much more worth tracking. 5E as played in most cases doesn't need this kind of rule, and if it did it would need to be adapted to the actual style of play (or at least the length of exploration turns...) but the rule exists because it's inherited and it just floats around the rulebook making spooky noises.
Now if WotC were to remove this rule or similar vestiges of editions past ... I suspect a number of fans would freak out. The problem is that this means new editions of D&D can never really be streamlined or intentional about creating a play style - it's always obscured by a haze of ghost rules to keep old players happy.
