So..here's an idea on materia.
For anyone who's experimented with materiazling their old or new gear, or doing like I've done and materia out accessories after they hit 0% durability rather than bother having them repaired, should be aware of how often level 1 or even level 2 materia comes up. And because materia can be considered a level 1 materia, but still have a set value, it wont stack with its own level.
So my thought was.. why not create a method to do just that, meld materia together, combining their values together? I can't think of any reason why it wouldnt be benefical to the community as a whole.
You could either set it up so that you can combine as many level 1 materia together, until its reached the level 1 cap of materia value and cannot be merged anymore. Or, take off the cap of the merging until its reached level 4 materia value.
I realize that there is a risk factor involved in making gear into materia and even moreso when putting multiple pieces of materia to the same piece of gear. But honestly.. having a dozen or so level 1 strength materia is just irritating. You could say.. just take the materia, add it to a low level piece of gear. Sure, but it requires the catalyst for that.. sure that's cheap. There is always going to be some sort of valid argument and if someone wants to do that, more power to them. Personally, I like my idea better, as a means for someone to reduce their crappy gear to come out further ahead.
Ultimately the goal here is to thin out the low amounts of level 1 and level 2 stage materia, to create better levels of 3 and 4. Or mostly just 4. Because face it.. who really wants a level 1, 2 or 3 of anything.. if they can have the level 4?
Anyways.. food for thought.
And as a further note.. if Yoshi likes the idea, but is afraid of it being too easily used so that everyone can just break low level gear to get high level materia.. which is what the point is anyways.. create a reduction factor on it. If you want to meld 5 pieces of str+5 materia, instead of getting a str+25 materia in the end.. you get a +20 strength, thereby losing the last materia in the long run, but still gaining a single piece of materia 4x better than any one of the single pieces you started out with. Or create a ceiling that lowers everytime you put materia together, so for instance, starting with piece of materia at +30 something, if you try to add two +10's to get to 50.. instead you get reduced to +45 and thats it, it wont raise anymore, forever set at that value.
Something can be worked out I'm sure. I'm just throwing ideas out because I just made up a separate retainer JUST to hold my materia.. I have far too much and low level materia is worth crap.