>>50128
The cash shop currency was energy crystals. You had to pay energy to progress through a dungeon, but you had an "energy gas tank" that slowly filled up over time (and only worked for dungeon progress), so you could dungeon dive a couple times a day without paying. There was also an energy market where everyone could buy and sell energy, so technically F2P players could get everything (or at least most things) eventually (with tons of grinding).
Eventually they decided to completely redo the system. No more "energy gas tank" and no more cost for dungeon diving. Instead, leveling up equipment (which used to happen automatically) now requires incredibly rare items that you basically have to buy from the cash shop. It was honestly worse than limited energy.
And I'm not sure how much this actually factored into it, but there are colored gems you can collect in the dungeon, and originally you'd dump them into bins for a few coins, and the total gems everyone had put in would be displayed on a big screen, with the gem colors affecting the themes for the next iteration of the dungeon. In reality I'm pretty sure depositing gems didn't accomplish anything meaningful, but for me it had a cool feeling of cooperation. But in the new system, the gems were just pet food, and the whole "help power the mothership" thing was just gone.