My solution for notifications, was disabling all of them, including noises. Keep the little badge icon that you can only see when logged in. Quality of life went up.
So maybe Apple isn't as bad at notifications as some would say ...
It amazes me that iOS has had this from day one, third party Android vendors including Samsung, Sony, and HTC have all created they own solutions, and yet Android made it to the letter "P" still without this feature.
I just upgraded to Oreo this week it remains to be seen just how many emails and messages I'm going to miss now that I can't see whether or not I have anything unread in these applications. It's frustrating.
The current trend is to do away with these distractions and allow people to focus.
What you're arguing for is the exact opposite. You're asking for the distraction. Persistent reminders that you are neglecting a particular App.
The Oreo model means I either have to have notifications (which are actual distractions) or I simply have no clue if something needs to be dealt with. For a device designed for communication, this is important. It's not a distraction, it's literally the reason I have the device.
That combined with notifications set to repeat on messages (like old feature phones used to) means I'll get a few pings from people I'd like to hear from. Everything and everyone else is silence until I decide to unlock and look.
The only thing I miss on iPhone is a notification LED as even with repeat I occasionally miss a message or call from friends. Then again perhaps I don't: in all my years on Android, and paying for several LED apps, I never once got the simple notification behaviour I sought from an LED. Not once. Android always overwrote it with something else, or Google's preferred colour or different behaviour.
My old feature phones and early GSM mobiles managed to do LEDs sanely enough.
That was my solution to having a bunch of apps on my phone that I don't use.