Incentives have always largely been performance-based, I believe, but the cases you really hear about are the ones where the jurisdictions are desperate for the investment, and that desperation may make them extremely willing to renegotiate incentives to keep the company from picking up and moving.

The most notable case in recent memory of outlandish incentives is the Foxconn plant in WI, where the original incentives were not paid out as Foxconn failed to meet even the lowest tranche of requisite investment. Wisconsin refused to pay, but this intersected with political sniping (as the Republicans, voted out of office, criticized the new Democratic administration for not paying up). The contract appears to have been renegotiated back to "normal" levels of incentives, which have been paid out as Foxconn has met those levels of investment.