Revamp Potential?

I have met many maplers over the past 9 years of playing. People who play to socialize, people who play dress-up, people who play for quests, and people who play for damage. I have never seen or heard of any Mapler cubing their gear with a thought other than "I want to get stronger".
It's not just the 1% or 10% who can afford to get strong enough to tackle the top bosses. Every single player who cares about potential at all, wants the damage-boosting lines.
I honestly don't understand who you think would be happy with "we'll leave potential in the game but make it cost more rerolls to get stronger." (Except maybe Nexon's accountants)

Yeah, ok this made me laugh. I mean what you're saying is totally true but the thing is that without the garbage lines, potential is game breaking. It may sound funny in the current world to try and balance a mechanic like potential but if its not managed then the feature can add to the Pay2win/ power creep bad stuff. Um to rephrase that, in the "best" Free2play games anything like buying direct power is usually frowned upon. Which is similar to how a game would normally want to avoid introducing power creep. Alright so with Maplestory it was forced to embrace those "negative" things and now it is in a different and strange place from where it started from. Or that is to say, with the easier it is to get the power through the Nx cubes then the deeper Maple moves into the Pay2win.

Bear with me though because what is really mind blowing is that we cant necessarily call this direction "bad". Even if some players cry foul and as was pointed out, if Nexon is making bank from it and enough big spending players like the system as is then in a way, the game is "working as intended."

A better example is if Maple is going to go the full Pay2win route then why keep the gamble element at all? At least with the garbage lines included then potential had the appearance of challenge. Albeit one based on money. (which is still pretty bad but that depends on preference) I guess it comes down to what one person likes someone else may dislike.

TL DR: With garbage lines, potential is more "balanced". Hence it is only a small addition to the game.

On the other hand, with the better or more powerful that the cubes are then the more broken it is. (Pay2win) Hence potential becomes a main part of the game and the game itself seems like more of an afterthought when combined with other changes. (such as damage cap adjustments)

But it still depends on who is being asked because technically it is not a problem while also being a huge problem for others. There are advantages and drawbacks with either approach.

In short, Nexon might have made potential too tempting and too important.