It's not
my strong progression loop. The XP mechanic is a staple of
the entire video game industry.
It's in sports games. It's in first-person shooter games. It's in role playing games. It's in mobile games. It's in MOBAs. It's in real-time strategy games. It's in racing games. It's in
damn near everything. Video game players eat up XP loops, because the amount of progress they need to improve their character is immediately quantified, the tasks to reach those goals are discrete, and it immediately creates sub-objectives and sub games within the high-level game. It's addictive. It's "I gotta grind out one more level before I cut this game off." It keeps players engaged with your game and therefore keeps players in the game therefore earns the game maker money from free word-of-mouth advertising by said gamers talking about what games they are playing and enjoying.
This is not just my argument. This is the entire video game industry. The support for the mechanic is in the games that sell. The support for the mechanic is in the studies done upon it explaining why it works, what motivations it triggers in a player's brain to explain why they enjoy it. Stats to create more stats is the entire point; you play well in a game, your character gets stronger and earns more abilities so you can play against more challenging and interesting characters.
If you have a problem with XP loops in general, might I suggest that video games with XP loops (which is most of them, anymore) simply aren't for you? Your opinion - though you are free to hold it - is quite literally at odds with twenty to thirty years of trends in the video game space and absolutely not the view of the overwhelming critical consensus on the matter.