Why is LOP FOMO a Thing?

I'm going to be honest, I haven't had this urge to buy everything since the Qixi Festival (aka Lanling event) earlier this year. But I'm definitely aware that the desire to grab everything in a special event is still a struggle for me at times. However, I think I finally figured out the root of the issue is.

I'll be the first to admit, most of the time when a new high ingot spending event drops, I'm usually not like "man, I gotta have it!" Particularly, when it comes to a lot of the outfits. Nine times out of ten, I usually like the outfit nobody comments on and can't stand the outfit everybody drools over. But once the event starts, and everyone starts topping up, and have already acquired enough points to claim all the special items... I get frustrated.

And so I ask myself why? I know there’s not much benefit to getting everything out right, at least from what I’ve experienced in previous events. You have a better gage of how much you really need to spend on the items you actually want, if you wait until the last day. Plus, it gives you time to acquire all your free points before spending a single ingot. I don't always follow this rule on the P2P, cause I know I have to drop some ingots at minimum to acquire the title. But maybe if you're planning on getting everything anyway, buying everything right up front is just a form of reassurance that it's done and over with? I don't know.

I mean did do that for the Lantern Festival event back at the end of February earlier this year, now that I'm think about it... But that was mostly because I didn't want to participate in the event after day 2.

Back to my point. What I figured out last week, in the middle of the Halloween Event and hoarding for CS Dominant/Favored on my P2P, was that it's not so much the items themselves offered during the event that I care about, but the subsequent power boost I'll be missing out on if I don't get everything. Because on my P2P, I know a lot of the high VIPs both on the local and cross server grouping, collect and activate those 1% things during Dom, so when I'm not sitting on as many of them, I sort of feel disadvantaged. (I have more thoughts on that, that I will divulge in another post.)

I will say this though, having a F2P experiment account has really allowed me to temper my compulsion to buying everything. Since I have to be picky on the F2P, I've found that I'd rather save up ingots to purchase items that will positively impact my game play in the long term, such as building the academy or pigeon mail attributes. Thus, it makes me scrutinize what I truly want to buy on the P2P. Because, let's be real. It's a game that you're spending ingots on to get fun skins for your avatar. So as long as you like that title, outfit, palace scene or boudoir scene, why does it matter what you get?

Gosh, I hate that I'm a passive aggressive competitive LOP player...