>>10363572I've thought about it a lot, but I think that the biggest factor ultimately boils down to the over-specialization of modern Lego sets and their pieces.
Take set 6374 here. There's a few specialized pieces for things like the mailbox and awning, but the bulk of the set is white bricks and red slopes that can be used in many ways to create your own personalized house outside of the base model.
Now compare it to 31139, a newer house from this year. Quite a few large pieces are already eaten up by just building the ground for it to stand on. Paths that were before shown through a baseplate are now allocated to dozens of 1 x 1 pieces to bloat piece count. Even more of the set's parts are niche usability pieces for a cheap reference or two. The house consists of many different colors as well, meaning that you'll easily run out of pieces that flow well together, it even happens with the designers of these things.
tl;dr too many specialized pieces in modern sets bad
