The increasing gap between players and bosses.

No. Nexon can't nerf potential because that would alienate their highest-paying customers. People who paid to see big numbers will be very unhappy to see those numbers shrinking.

What should be done is make potential more accessible. Have (real) Cubes drop from monsters, or make them craftable. Raise the chance of crafting and fusing to give high-potential items, perhaps by using materials that are somewhat harder to obtain or require an extra stage of processing. (Don't turn it into a meso sink, though. This is meant to make the unfunded able to make their own good gear. The unfunded don't have too many meso.)
Make it so a person can choose whether to work a real-life job and use the money to easily get cubes and high potential, or work hard in Maple and get the same high potential. Let the unfunded get 100k range and more, by applying themselves over a period of time.
The funded will still be able to do it much faster, and on harder to obtain gear. They will still get higher damage - but they'll only be ten times as strong as the unfunded, not a hundred times as strong.



But you're wrong. Having 300% STR makes you hit 4 times as hard (since your base str counts too).

Damage formula: Damage = wpn * (4 * STR + DEX) * ATTACK / 100
If your STR grows from 999 to 999+3000 your damage will be 4 times as much.

So why do all these people with 300% STR hit 700k while the unfunded only hit 50K?
Because they also have a LOT more ATTACK.
The unfunded have an ordinary sword 60'ed to 120 w.att; the funded have a boss sword with higher base stats, more slots, perfect-scrolled and 10+ times enhanced, ending up with 240 w.att.
When you add up the rest of their gear: shield, gloves, cape, shoes, rings, pendants... why, everything today can have attack on it (and lots of it), if you have the money. And set effects on top of that. The funded can easily have four-five times the w.att of the unfunded.

So while the %STR "only" makes their damage 4 times as high, the additional attack makes their damage 5 times as high again. Multiplicatively. So they do 20 times the damage of a "normal" character.

I agree with this. The answer isn't to nerf the system and screw over Nexon's highest paying customers. After all at the end of the day they are a business, and it wouldn't be wise to essentially flip off their biggest paying players. But at the same time they need to realize that they shouldn't alienate their unfunded players by making processes such as cubing a "premium" feature. It's arguable that cubes are one of the cash shop's biggest revenue generating items when some players choose spend hundreds of dollars on them in multiple instances. They can still keep up their sales with cash shop cubes, but at the same time they need to make that part of the game accessible to ALL of the players if they want everyone to have the same experience in game. Unlimited in way has taken a small step towards this with their MaplePoint exchange NPC in the FM. Although the current exchange rate (100m for below 1k mp) is horrendous, it's nice to see that they've at least given other players some accessibility to the premium items in the cash shop by means of mesos. The occult cube is another good change that comes with Unlimited. Tradable cubes that drop from bosses but only raise or drop the item rank between rare and epic. Maybe more cubes like this would be the solution for the unfunded. Craftable, or huntable cubes that work like the occult cube. Maybe one that has a chance to go from epic to unique, but has a chance to lower your rank. This makes the realm of cubing accessible to all players, but keeps the cubes of the cash shop as a premium for those who fork over the cash. With a system like this other players can slowly obtain the same kinds of equipment as paying players by simply putting in the time and effort to craft and hunt their own kind of cubes. If a person chooses to splurge money on the game in order to obtain a higher range quickly that's perfectly fine. However there should be a way for non-paying players to use the same kind of in game functions without having to pay a premium.

I realize this doesn't directly relate to the topic at hand, but it would definitely make some higher tier bosses more accessible to non-paying players over time if a system for upgrading equipment like this was in place.