I currently play two gachas: Guardian Tales and Fire Emblem Heroes. Guardian Tales is very F2P-friendly, FEH is less so. But I feel like as long as you play for a little bit every day, the sense of progression is great.
I look at it through how much time I've put in - I can spend $60-$70 on a new game and get ~40 hours of entertainment give or take, either before I finish it or get bored. But a GaaS like a gacha gives about an hour of playtime a day in small chunks, so now we're talking about 400+ hours a year. I'm usually fine paying a monthly fee or buying small packages, I've probably spent about $150 in each game a year.
But the downsides are rough - my absolute favorite game to play was Final Fantasy: Record Keeper, which shut down last year after 7.5 years in service. That one felt absolutely terrible to lose. It sucks that they couldn't find a way to make a closed server version, but it's just the nature of the game model. Sucks.
Yeah the community around XIV is just the best. I dip in and out a couple of times a year but if it wasn't for the community (and the memes) then it would be much less often.