That's my concern as well, personally. The current trend in designing mainstream photographic lenses seems to favour complex, highly corrected designs which a landscape or architecture shooter might welcome with open arms but I find that the bokeh suffers because of that, especially in how contrasty it becomes which I find distracting.
This is especially visible when shooting video with modern still lenses, the way the footage is rendered is more and more reminiscent of zooms. None of that is visible with high end cinematic lenses, for instance, where seasoned cinematographers perhaps realize ultimate sharpness and contrast is not actually an asset.
Sharpness is an easy aspect to measure for the average internet pixel-peeper and manufacturers have to give in to that unfortunate expectation to boost their sales and push the next "new and improved" model.
Another aspect that sucks the soul out of a lens for me is when geometrical distortion is corrected flat out. No, I am not looking for a novelty lens, but images lose 3d character if it is overdone by default (optical or baked in software corrections). Again, it is subtle but it has a detrimental effect.
A good analogy here is how most modern music recordings have been produced past the last 20 years or so, equalised to death in vocals (more recent I guess) but especially beat-wise. It deprives the music of grove and dynamics that come from slight rythm fluctuations, where a drummer might choose to drag a beat slightly, or slow down a few bars, for instance. These are often completely lost in post production when shifted digitally to allign them to the "correct" rythm markers or clicks for the whole song. It is often inaudible to the naked ear unless measured and quantified (we're talking fractions of seconds) but yet perceived by the brain; your foot just starts tapping or you're left completely indifferent to the ever-so-perfectly-recorded yet sterile piece of music.