It's not that weird. Before PLEX, it wasn't "grinding for $0", but it was "grinding to get the Ishtar heavy assault cruiser". Making the monetary value visible the way that MTX does sort of kills the allure.

It's a well-known effect, first documented by the _Freakonomics_ guys: https://freakonomics.com/2013/10/what-makes-people-do-what-t...