It’s not too surprising that people obsess over player counts when most of the news about how well games are doing is based on the metric.
They’re right though, gamers are way too eager to call any low player count game dead when really it’s the casual community having their fill of the latest content update.
One game I think handled daily rewards decently (after a decade of making it a chore) is Destiny 2. They used to have daily bounties at every vendor, now it’s just a handful and there’s a weekly “pathfinder” with branching goals, completing it lets you start another but since the rewards drop off it doesn’t feel like you’re missing out by not playing.