Yeah, I wanted to mention that. If the VP are called "money", I'm kinda confused if there is no such mechanic.
About Seasons: I think you're missing a lot of it's depth.
I'll list points where your suggessted rewording would differ. These aren't obscure edge cases, all of this has mattered in the less than 10 games I played.
1) You don't always have VP to pay for a card.
Most importantly, you don't have any VP at the start of the game. So, in order to get a VP-cost card into play, you first need to either sell elements, take a die that gives VP, or play a card that gives immediate VP. All of these are things you wouldn't want to do early if you wouldn't need the Vp to play a card. I've had games were VP for cards were extremely tough to get (there were 2 cards in play that require you to pay an extra VP to the owner whenever you play a card)
2) You're taking the VP away from your opponent(s)
This might lead to them not being able to play cards.
3) Your opponent(s) might not have VP to steal
If there is a lot of stealing going on, you can often delay getting VP until later, thus pereventing them from being stolen. There's even a card that steals a VP/turn, but destroys itself if there's nothing to steal.
4) If you get all the VP at once, you can dump the card at some point.
If the card effect is continuous, you can't just sacrifice the card for something.
5) There's a card that can turn back the time and thus cause additional changes of season (not that relevant though)
6) It works totally different with a different number of players (though you might argue that that's better)
Similar things apply to other cards with VP costs, and the benefit of most can't be easily calculated, since they respond to events of which you don't know how often they'll happen (When someone plays a card, or at the end of a turn)
Also, I don't think you can say that Seasons has a fixed game length. It lasts 12 seasons, but the important thing is the number of turns, which varies depending on the dice that get take.
Length of a game also often correlates to its complixety and heaviness, I guess that's whyyou were told about them.
I really feel like üplaying Seasons some more now