For me, most of the rewarding part of my 40% has been the ultimate control over what every key does. I agree that 6.9/10 is about the difficulty level of making it my daily, but it is supremely easy to change my keymap in QMK to whatever I need. I have the exact same two keys to do () [] {} <> and / on different layers/Combos, one button that does mid-sentence punctuation , ; : - and one that does end-sentence punctuation .? !

And, yes, the original reason was so I spent less on switches and keycaps LOL