Found the discussion about compulsion loops very interesting, because I have been struggling with this for a while now:

I am sick of the never-ending progression in CoD, BF3, Uncharted... It always makes you feel worse at the game when many times it's simply that others have invested more time, since they maybe only play one or two games for a very long time. Of course, their skill also increases, but it's not just that. With all the extremely more powerful weapons, new add-ons, kill-streaks and what not they just crush all the players who cannot invest as much time into unlocking these things.

As a result the starting points in each match are not fair anymore, which makes multiplayer matches in MW3 and BF3 very frustrating very quickly. That's why I prefer Halo (Reach) as my go-to online shooter nowadays, since the unlocks are cosmetic-only. Likewise, in Fifa 12 the winner is decided only by who is better at THE GAME and not by who invested more time into this one title - every match starts off of the same "fair" base.