Materia overmelding need an adjustment.

The percentages need to be on a per player basis, not the player base as a whole, this way an individual player doesn't get shafted.
Basic math says should need at most 20 materia for a single 5% meld.
When you poll the player base as a whole that may be a correct estimation, but we don't experience the whole. What we experience is our own little sliver of numbers in the game.

Assume that 5th meld on all gear except tools, the 5% one. As a singular player it is perfectly reasonable to assume a 5% chance and 10 pieces of gear, it should about 200 materia to meld them all, given it's probability and not an exact number we'll say ± another 25%. meaning 250 materia would meld them all.

Again very basic math here.

Now when you add probability into the mix things get a little more complicated.

We obviously want to know the expected number of attempts to guarantee a success at 5%. That equation will look something this.

100% - (95% ^ X) = y

100% being what we want our chance to be, 95% ^ X is the failure rate of 95% times itself equal to the number of attempts made. Y being the expected success rate after the combined attempts.

For instance 5 attempts would look like this.

100% - (95% ^ 5) = 33.7%

Written out would be this

100% - (95% x .95% x .95% x .95% x .95%) > 100% - 66.3%
100% - 66.3% = 33.7% chance of single success in all attempts combined.

If we plug in 13 attempts, we get a projected 49% chance of success.
At 14 attempts we get a projection of 52% chance of success.
At 50 attempts the projected success rate is 93%.
At 90 attempts the projected failure rate is less than 1%.

So my proposal is this, instead of letting a computer do unchecked RNG, because they are horrible at it. How about a line of code gets added in that once the projected success rate breaks, let's say 75% during a BULK MELD, it becomes an automatic success. This would still leave the RNG in place so it's still "random", but it will put a hard cap on the number of Materia. Keeping the personal experience closer to the stated estimated chance percentage.

It could still be a decent number burned in the end.
The percentages for BiS melds are generally 17%, 10%, 7%, and 5%. This would put the hard caps for these specific numbers at...

%-chance-|Materia-Cap-|-actual-%-if-you-hit-the-cap-every-time
17%- | 11 | 9.09%
10%- | 14 | 7.14%
7%- | 19 | 5.26%
5%- | 28 | 3.57%

While it would still feel bad to always hit that cap, it would make for a very nice safety net.

This would be a great way to ease the burden of over-melds, help to keep the programs RNG in check, as well as show better respect for a player's time.

The thing is overmeldinf isn’t needed for anything, what’s the point of neutering the materia market for something that’s purely optional even for self sufficient players when materia aren’t even hard to get

If they really wanted to do some form of adjustment I would lower the purple scrip costs of anything below tier 7 melds so cheap nasty overmelding is cheaper

Sure, it felt bad when I lost 70 on a 7%. Then it felt good when my next 5% didn't lose any materia and the 5% after that only lost 2.

We're predisposed to remember the massive failures and not the successes. We know that advanced melding is a risk when we start. If we don't like the risk, then we can skip advanced melding.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The thing is overmeldinf isn’t needed for anything, what’s the point of neutering the materia market for something that’s purely optional even for self sufficient players when materia aren’t even hard to get....

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To hq the 7.05 recipes reliably, you need overmelds. Materia is easy to get, but it's laborious. Some people only have 2 maybe 3 hours a day to play and enjoy the game, that includes doing msq, leveling other classes, rolos, raids, trials, farm, ect. Unchecked RNG ≠ difficult, it just punishes players with less time available to them.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Sure, it felt bad when I lost 70 on a 7%. Then it felt good when my next 5% didn't lose any materia and the 5% after that only lost 2.

We're predisposed to remember the massive failures and not the successes....

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3 successes in 73 attempts is in fact acceptable.

As players, all we experience is small sample size. So that needs to be the focus for devs.

Not my SSs.

https://shorturl.at/GSUNe

2 successes in 151 attempts, 3.92%. Meld stated 10% .

https://shorturl.at/Miq9y

3 successes in 66 is 4.5% ish, if 5% attempt it's close enough, if a 7% it's tolerable.

https://shorturl.at/dysBS

0 successes, 58 attempts, stated 10%

Having trouble currently locating the SS of a poor soul's attempt, lost over 400 materia on a 10% chance.

The change would balance attempts in small sample sizes, aligning the individual closer to stated percentages.

A question that was asked: "Can a computer generate a truly random number?"

Steve Ward, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, responded with:

"You can program a machine to generate what can be called “random” numbers, but the machine is always at the mercy of its programming. “On a completely deterministic machine you can’t generate anything you could really call a random sequence of numbers, because the machine is following the same algorithm to generate them. Typically, that means it starts with a common ‘seed’ number and then follows a pattern.” The results may be sufficiently complex to make the pattern difficult to identify, but because it is ruled by a carefully defined and consistently repeated algorithm, the numbers it produces are not truly random. “They are what we call ‘pseudo-random’ numbers,”

Until computers can generate true random numbers, without costly equipment that use unpredictable processes like thermal or atmospheric noise. A safety measure is needed to keep small averages close to expected results, as people do tend to fixate on big failures.

I'm not gonna bother with commenting on the RNG of the game.
Honestly, a 33% usually feels like a 10%, and a 5% usually feels like 2%. It's stupid, and it has always been like that since ARR.
However, that doesn't mean the game has to stay that way.
I do like the idea of a safety net.
It can prevent the stupid scenario where someone loses like 162 materia in a single meld, which is absolutely mind-boggling, and just doesn't make sense (trust me, it can happen).

I used to track all my melds whenever I pentamelded. It was on a google sheet that spanned multiple expansions. For every 50+ materia lost on a 10%, it comes out in the wash with 3 no/few materia lost on a 5% meld. The RNG is pretty spot-on. It just doesn't feel that way. We all remember the 98% HQ that results in an NQ but we forget all the 1% HQs that we get.

I like blowing materia up. I pentameld everything. With expensive materia.

I have no other gil burning hobbies.

P. S. Nothing is perfectly reasonable to assume when one is in the fields of math and/or probability.

Overmelding is a niche activity for very rich players to dump some of their riches on.

For the vast vast vast majority of the playerbase, it should be a no-issue. You never do it. You don't have to, you wouldn't want to, you just don't do it. Hence the 100s of Materia blown up have no significance except allowing us all to make a few million of gil selling Materia in the week of a new crafted set release.

It feels counterintuitive to have a feature you're innately discouraged from using, but that's a recurring theme with this game now.

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Originally Posted by VictorSpoils

It feels counterintuitive to have a feature you're innately discouraged from using, but that's a recurring theme with this game now.

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I don't see the developers as discouraging players from using anything. I see them as making it clear that such things are optional so that those who either aren't interested or don't have the resources (whether time or gil) feel like they're mandatory. Those who are interested and do have the resources can take advantage of those things as they wish.

It's when players end up feel like they are being forced into doing certain things that games start going downhill when it comes to their purpose of entertainment.