There's games that have less kingmaker impact - where your choices restrict the choices other players can make, but not to the extent that Settlers does. Consider just about any worker placement games where, say, five players compete for three three worker spots on a particular resource tile.

It sucks if you were one of the two players who didn't get a chance to place - but it doesn't feel quite as shitty as when someone occupies the only worker spot for a particular tile, just to spite you.