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if you only upgrade when you have a reason, then upgrading will be much more painful. sticking to one version isn’t really an option because all the existing bugs and incomplete features, and because if you report a broken feature or bug they will only fix it in a next version (or several versions later).
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that’s a time waster. I can relate to the OP about wanting to work on game code rather than the engine, which is why I have a strict policy of sticking to pre-compiled engine releases. once you start making engine changes, updating to a new version is a time hog.
also you can’t just cherry pick code changes. it can work on code changes after one version but after that any code you want will be dependent on other features and so on.