Dare I say, gimmicks.
I often like special control-methods and things that might take you out of the world a bit but can be fun in its own right. They are often a hit or miss type of thing, but when done right they are often a reason why I love some games.

Motion controls are awesome and when done right can substantially elevate a game.

Dialling in a shot with gyro in Sniper Elite 4, flicking the remote to propel Mario into the air or smash a baddie in Mario Galaxy, or slashing foes in the swing of my arm in Red Steel 2 were all phenomenal experiences that a standard pad just can't replicate.

I genuinely love the 3D graphics of the 5th generation (and the 6th gen for that matter) , when I see something like the graphics of the old Tomb Raider games, Resident Evil, Panzer Dragoon, Medal of Honor etc. it's like abstract art to me, there is some mystique to the esthetics that is just lost when they try to make the games look more "beautiful". 

I also like the controls of a lot of the games from that period, despite people calling them "dated", I like that there wasn't a "standard" on how games should control, but developers actually experimented with different ways.

Also linearity and shorter games are generally (not always) a plus for me.

Openworld Side Objectives/Activities. I like going through the map ticking off all the objectives. It's therapeutic like a painting by numbers or something lol.

I don't mind checklist maps ala ubisoft.

Weapons breaking in BotW and TotK.

Now I know most people do not complain about this but the ones that do are very loud about it.

It is one of those games better features in my opinion. The game, like a lot of action adventure games and rpgs, is filled with a lot of different weapons. But unlike all other games of this type, where you ignore/sell/scrap 99% of everything you find, all of them matter here and both forces you, to have a plan (not just hack and slash) and to use most of the weapons since they are a consumable just like a health potion might be.

Easy and short.

But I do myself complain about linearity.

10 years ago was 2016. Preferences and standards were just about the same as they are now. Are you sure of that?

Not to mention people felt the Resident Evil controls were unusual and clunky as far back as 1996, you can easily find reviews mentioning it. But the whole package more than made up for that.

Games utilizing modern technology and getting more demanding as a result. There's complaints when a game requires RT but taking advantage of modern technology to push things forward is a good thing. Same goes for why GTA 6 seemingly only being 30fps on the PS5 and Xbox Series is great since that means they're pushing the consoles hard to create a world as advanced as they can make it on that level of hardware. There's also complaints when the max settings of a game are extremely demanding but having optional settings that bring even a 5090 to its knees is also a good thing and should happen even more often.

Agree. The Yellow Paint thing complaint also seemed weird to me.

Another one for me is complaining about grinding. Probably cause i grew up playing in the 90s, but grinding for levels or farming for items has never felt like a problem. Within reason of course, nothing like Tibia or RO.

I'll echo the OP again by agreeing that features that help with navigation is often a good thing. Mini-maps. Indications of where certain footholds are for climbing (especially given how detailed graphics are these days). Et cetera.

I'd also agree with linearity. Open-worlds, Metroidvanias, and other non-linear worlds have their place, but that place isn't "everywhere." Some of the most fun levels ever devised were self-contained ones with a clear beginning, middle, and end, with maybe some little side areas to explore here and there. Sometimes it's nice to have a game where it's clear where to go next, and you're not obliged to spent time wandering around some gigantic map wondering where to go next and there are no clear Points A, B, C, etc. A bit of directed structure can result in a fun game. That's why 2D Mario games still work after 40 years.

Speaking of giant maps, another one I'd like to add is "short" games. Oh, God, did "short" become a word just a dirty as "linear" in many gaming circles, and many of them devised what is to me the most asinine bit of calculus ever, that being "A game's value should be measured by price divided by length of one playthrough," as if replay value isn't a thing. Possibly one of the reasons why I still prefer older games is that "short" was the standard. I could beat most games in a single sitting in the NES & SNES days. Even in the first two 3D generations, there were still plenty of games I could knock out in like two or three sittings. Meanwhile, so many newer games can take me weeks worth of sittings to beat. You typically get plopped down in this gigantic contiguous world filled with giant checklists of miscellany to do, and while much of it is technically optional, it's often functionally a necessity in order to keep yourself from being under-leveled, as such games often contain RPG-lite elements, namely XP levels that affect your ability to gain HP and new skills. These games are so vast and so much of your time is just spent getting places that the devs had to add fast-travel so you didn't have to go down the same roads and other paths you've already traversed fifty times already and you've seen everything there is to see from corner to corner of the map.

Time in finite, and I want to spend that time playing other games, or watching movies or TV shows, or something other than working on a long-ass game that starts to feel like a full-time job. At some point, the game just overstays its welcome and I'm thinking to myself "Wrap that shit up! Wrap it up, B!" Games that take forever to beat are games I rarely if ever will go back and replay, and the ones I did had to me an outstanding gameplay loop and amazing story, but even in the replays I try to just rush it as much as the game will allow me. Meanwhile, I can crank up an old Mario or Sonic or Mega Man or Halo game on the regular because they ask so little of my time. Most of my all-time Top 20 games I can beat in a single afternoon. If I have, say, 60 hours a month dedicated to playing games, I have to make a choice to play one long game or several shorter games. It's like rewatching a 2-hour movie vs. rewatching an entire multi-season TV series (if it has a serialized story, at least). The movie is just the better option for a casual watch. To me, the perfect length of a non-RPG is 8-12 hours. Leave the 40+ hour adventures to traditional RPGs like your Final Fantasies. There's been so many games that would have been better if they were shorter (and in some cases more linear).

@00Xander00 I was complaining about tank controls back in 1998. I slogged through RE2 on the PS1 back in the day, but had no interest in the series past that because it felt like the controls were fighting me every step of the way. Tank controls weren't some stroke of genius, some deliberately unintuitive scheme to make the game more challenging or "scary." They were born out of necessity because the PS1 controller was essentially a modified SNES controller and devs had to create control schemes based around a D-pad. Lots of games on the PS1 used tank controls because there wasn't any realistic way to have the kind of controls that are the standard today through the use of just a D-pad.

The real genius in controls that generation was on Nintendo's end. As odd as the N64 controller looked, that analog stick was a revolution. I remember how simple and intuitive the controls on Mario 64 were. You pressed the stick in a direction, and Mario moves in that direction. And once modern dual analog controls became commonplace and standardized starting in Gen 6, tank controls eventually faded away. Capcom was oddly one of the few that still retained them in some fashion, but it wasn't until the RE2 remake was released and standard dual analog controls were fully adopted that I actually started to enjoy the series, and I've since played and enjoyed the hell out of RE7, RE3 remake, and RE4 remake, and I plan on getting RE8 & RE9 soon. Tank controls were a product of their time, and should be left in that time, unless someone is making a retro game deliberately aiming to recapture that feel of clunky PS1 controls.