See, for a lot of people, roleplaying is its own reward. We don't need XP or gold or anything to have a good time roleplaying. The act of roleplaying is fun, so even if it's actively BAD for our characters, we do it anyway, because that makes sense and is fun.
Most all of us are in agreement on the railroading bit, though. Railroading is bad. (Linearity is NOT necessarily bad, but the trick is to get player buy-in so that way their characters follow the path without it being forced.)
Chaos, from your various threads, it honestly sounds like you might not enjoy TTRPGs much. And that's fine-nothing says you HAVE to enjoy them-but you might honestly have a better time just playing Skyrim or something.