Because it's hard to create tangible benefits. Reddit doesn't want to have any functionality that makes the site hard to use. They don't want to say, limit how

Because it's hard to create tangible benefits. Reddit doesn't want to have any functionality that makes the site hard to use. They don't want to say, limit how much you can post because you're making content for free for them and keeping other people engaged. Minor quality of life improvements are easily addressed with browser plugins like RES. It has to be something that can't be provided that way. So what you get is very niche features like the ability to load more than 500 commments and a shiny badge.