Getting Better?

It's a mentality left over from the early days, when getting high numbers early on would potentially shave HOURS off your grinding.

Well, partially, but if you go to a place like Basil and see the mentality there among players who clearly aren't pre-BB veterans, they look at the max damage hitters and feel like THAT is the standard to achieve, and that anything less makes you lackluster. The fact that perfection exists so commonly, as in not with the best person in the server but with the best people of each subclass, means that people see such a huge goal on the horizon that apparently only nx can help bridge. Extremely good equips weren't always worth more than max mesos either, so pretty much you are a lot more likely to have to pay with nx which just...sucks even if you have the mesos to convert.