They will not release gear that is better than gear with materia. If they do, noone will meld anymore. They will add more rare/ex gear for sure, but they will also come up with new normal gear that, when melded with 2 or so tiers of materia will become better.
The system is broken right now, there is no skill involved, only luck and gil. Like someone already said, the only way to have the best gear in the game right now is if you have lots of gil, which is RMT heaven.
I hope they either change this to something Meowie or someone else suggested, quest or HNM which drop certain key items that give you a materia slot, or something else that removes this gil sink out of the equation and replaces it with a time sink.
