2.25 Materia Conversion - Opinions?

Today after logging in not even an hour after servers came back up the entire market for materia was wiped out. Initial reports from people who did the exchange said its completely random, 5 materia for 1 of a random stat. So you trade in 5 crafter materia, get 1 elemental of the same grade. Really? Crash the market for that?

Kinda upsetting that this is what Squenix puts their effort into. Not things people actually want. Maybe look into Chocobo stat resets or breeding? Catalysts for raising melding %, Better rng calculators? Idk there are a million things i think they could have focused on other than this.

Other opinions?

wait, wait... any 5 materia, will net you 1 materia? Same tier or increased tier?

Sounds like this is just sucking the materia out of the world for hardly any return.

I don't think anyone in their right mind would try to transmute crafting materia. Rather, that's almost guaranteed to lose you value.
It is random in that it isn't tied to the respective pools like you'd see with spiritbinding.

I just posted about this elsewheres, so c/p:

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It's a little ironic that a system like SBing which utilizes RNG is the most stable method of generating wealth via crafting.
To me it seems like they're trying to shift the balance of wealth away from the craft SBers, while providing greater reward for generating materia across all levels.
This patch only serves to (perhaps temporarily) drive up base costs for us, but benefits the ones SBing battle-type materia as they've now an outlet for the elemental III/IVs.

With the previous patch that saw a relatively high minimum NPC price for all materia added, direct result was 3-4x price hike compared to prepatch prices. Still workable, but forcibly designates a higher amount to the users generating all the crap materia we use in bulk. I don't think it stimulated activity like they'd perhaps hoped though? Which is why we now see this weird materia transmutation system, which only really seems useful for elemental IVs, perhaps IIIs. Everything else is mostly in the bracket where, as others mentioned, it would be more profitable to just MB them.

As for tier Is being high atm, I'm content to just sell them off in bulk at absurdly high prices, and wait for it to normalize a week or so down the line.

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I don't think this addition was intended so much as a -new interesting feature- so much as it was to divert wealth away from the subset of people bulk SBing, in an attempt to close the gap by indirectly further increasing the cost of a key component.

I knew SE would do this for some reason and I'm glad I didn't bother buying every materia off the market haha, Valve did something like this with their game called Counter-Strike Global Offence with their weapons where you hand in 10 weapons to receive a higher tier or lower tier weapon, it's gambling to see if you're lucky enough to get something good or end up with something that's worthless :P

Take 5 worthless Materia for a chance at 1 good Materia?

I'll stick to taking my Elemental Resistance Materia and melding to to gear I want to SB.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

Take 5 worthless Materia for a chance at 1 good Materia?

I'll stick to taking my Elemental Resistance Materia and melding to to gear I want to SB.

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Truth.
/10chars

Well, this is useful (potentially) in one instance. Say you're still working on Relics, or haven't gotten a lvl 50 class-quest done and you need x number of Tier 3 materia of some time. Now you have a t3 materia at the moment, but not the right type so you go to the boards and sometimes go pale at the prices. However, you can now take that t3 materia of the wrong type and 4 t1's and meld them and you will get a new t3... maybe the one you need, maybe not. However, because (at least from what I can tell from what I've seen so-far) you always end up with a materia of the highest tier materia you've used in the transmute, you can dump loads of less-expensive t1 materia in with that unneeded t3 to potentially get the t3 you need.

If that's the case then all this will do is drive up the price of lower tier materia.

I got some nice 200k or so by exploiting people who bought overpriced materia on the market board.

Praise Yoshida design!

It already did lol. Ive seen 700 gil materia go for 5000gil earlier today

First glance, the concept is a bit meh.

First issue is why for a free process do we have to go to an NPC to do this process, just seems like an unnecessary pre-req when they could of just given us an ability to use.

Second they could of added a "payment" via shards, since each materia is attuned to a color:
Attributes=Ice
"element" materia=it's element
Heaven/Savage=Fire
Battledance=earth
Gather=Wind
Craft=Water
Quick=Lightning.

Say you want to combine 2 gather, 2 craft and 1 quick all grade I, you put them in the slots and it would say "This process will require 20 wind shards, 20 water shards and 10 lightning shards to proceed"
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Third is an unknown issue atm but the process should allow for 5 of the same exact materia to go up a grade regardless. So if you mix 5 Strength I materia it should turn into an STR II materia, 5 STR II materia into STR III and 5 STR III into 1 STR IV.

In the process of combining I and II and the likes the % chance of getting upgraded version would be based on the amount of highest tier you are using, So say you use 2 STR II and 3 STR I then you would have a 40% chance of getting an STR III, if you do 3 DTR II 60% 4 STR II 80% and of course if you use all 5 as STR II then it would be a 100% chance of STR III.

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To be honest this "transmutation" concept could of been a lot more open in a sense, as I think more on it they could of allowed materia duplication via crystal/cluster cost.

So in the above process you pay those amount of shards to attempt the transmutation.

The Duplication process would work something like,

If you want to duplicate the STR I you would need to use 100 ice shards.
STR II 100 ice shards 50 ice crystals
STR III 100 ice crystals
STR IV 50 ice clusters 50 ice crystals

The above would be a means to eliminate surplus shards on the market and the process itself could be % based. For tier 1 duplication it would be 80%, tier 2 80% tier 3 40% and tier 4 20% success rate.

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With the above the idea is different routes to get the the same destination. If you want to burn 5 materia for the chance of a new one you can pay less shards to attempt it but of course you lose 5 to gain 1 new one but if you use the same exact materia of 1 type then you are guaranteed that upgrade(which may be possible haven't tested yet).

The idea in it's current implementation feels half-baked it doesn't really revitalize the materia market because it doesn't add any potential use towards the best gear in the game. This process feels like it could/may help out craft/gathers more and is moreso a process used to encourage players to materia their low level gear rather than using it and never getting rid of it.

It may work for some and they may eliminate a good bit of materia from the market as people test it out, but it does feel like once the rush of "interest" disappears from this new concept the flood of materia will just re-enter the market since like others have commented you increase your odds of better materia when you attune it to the gear you later turn into materia, so why waste 5 materia for the chance of 1 when you can just those 5 on a piece of gear and increase your odds of gaining a new materia that way.

Thank you SE for screwing over my SB'ing. I have been melding ~ 50 Level 1 materia per week on SB item melds. This has now increased my cost by a factor of 5+.

I was excited when they announced a new materia system.

However, what they gave us is very disappointing. More RNG ... yay ...

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Originally Posted by Waeksyn

Thank you SE for screwing over my SB'ing. I have been melding ~ 50 Level 1 materia per week on SB item melds. This has now increased my cost by a factor of 5+.

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Just spend a few minutes SBing sets of low level gear? It's easy to obtain and it binds ridiculously fast on high level enemies.

All those useless elemental materia went up in price thats for sure.

Upon little fiddling with it, this transmutation does seem like a waste of time and bleeds materia. If you want a specific tier you have to be sure to use the same tier otherwise you may get a lower tier.

So if you do 4 tier I and a tier III and think logically that it might grant a tier II you'd be wrong and just get a tier I.

I guess like others have mentioned this seems like it is only really worth it to get rid of the "useless" materia that is not worth slotting so for that I guess it works but they really shouldn't be using materia like that, they should of focused more on how to make that materia useable for melding rather than just saying "don't want it, then you can get rid of 5 and try for a new one."

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Originally Posted by Waeksyn

Thank you SE for screwing over my SB'ing. I have been melding ~ 50 Level 1 materia per week on SB item melds. This has now increased my cost by a factor of 5+.

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I feel yah lol. Was doing the same thing, but I really had a feeling something like this was coming since 2.0 prices. There was no way they were going to just leave trash materia as useless for nearly everyone, except for the uncommon SB melding crowd. Hoarded the majority of goods once the materia NPC sell prices increased... which honestly killed my buying of materia anyway. If I was usually too cheap to spend over 100gil per t1 materia before the change, I am most certainly too cheap to buy it after lol. At least I had managed to hoard around 1000 t1-t4 materia since then LOL.

Well there went my hopes for materia not even going to bother with it know hopefully they let there over the top fear of rmt open this system up but very doubtful good luck though for those that do materia though.

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Originally Posted by Airget

So if you do 4 tier I and a tier III and think logically that it might grant a tier II you'd be wrong and just get a tier I.

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I did several 4 t1s and 1 t3, always ended up with a t3. Not sure if that was just luck but it always ended up as the higher one for me.

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Originally Posted by odintius

Well there went my hopes for materia not even going to bother with it know hopefully they let there over the top fear of rmt open this system up but very doubtful good luck though for those that do materia though.

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If you're referring to the cost of useful melding of t3/4 materia, transmutation should actually help the prices drop slightly. More people will have the opportunity to get t3/4 to sell, raising the stocks and making people undercut. The recent increase of cost of useful t3/4 materia is due to the 2.2 crafted goods and needs of coil raiders (or the rich folk in general). 2.25 increased the prices of lower tier materia, particular trash ones like resistance, but it really didn't do much to popular stat materia like crit/acc/det.

I'm loving it. Turned my junk elementals into major $$$.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

If you're referring to the cost of useful melding of t3/4 materia, transmutation should actually help the prices drop slightly. More people will have the opportunity to get t3/4 to sell, raising the stocks and making people undercut. The recent increase of cost of useful t3/4 materia is due to the 2.2 crafted goods and needs of coil raiders (or the rich folk in general). 2.25 increased the prices of lower tier materia, particular trash ones like resistance, but it really didn't do much to popular stat materia like crit/acc/det.

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No not that pretty much the system to me its pointless system know not going to bother selling or anything else with materia in its current state it waste of gil imo but I can understand other might disagree.

To me it's another lazy game design concept where the game plays itself with the RNG and we just get to hope for something good to pop out of the slot machine, rather than some actual game mechanics we get to interact with.

Oh dear, it all makes sense now. Those multi-boxing RMTs farming high level mobs that doesn't drop anything useful at all while wearing low-level gear. For spiritbinding.

Low level materia now = money

It's weird that they started doing this a week or two before the patch. Defo in cahoots.

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Originally Posted by chocomaid

Oh dear, it all makes sense now. Those multi-boxing RMTs farming high level mobs that doesn't drop anything useful at all while wearing low-level gear. For spiritbinding.

Low level materia now = money

It's weird that they started doing this a week or two before the patch. Defo in cahoots.

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Most of the ones I've seen (which aren't TOO many) use the higher level gear (ilvl45+) to convert to t3/4 materia. They might have an inside-man. /datconspiracy

This is awful... I use 2 IV Earth, 3 III Ligthning ang got a I Ice...

I'm not trying this anymore...

Just tickling SE's ribs really. Or am I? O.o

On topic: I've done a few and i found that it's too inconsistent to provide any steady income, so prob won't use it again unless they change some mechanics. Some might get lucky, some might get boned.

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Originally Posted by KaosuNoTenshi

This is awful... I use 2 IV Earth, 3 III Ligthning ang got a I Ice...

I'm not trying this anymore...

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Wow seriously ?

They should at least not go below the lowest tier used, this is a good example of more SE RNG bullshit otherwise, will they never learn ?

This system is an answer to a question that was never asked lol. I really do not know what to do with it or why it is there. There are 3 sorts of Materia for me: the ones I need for myself, the ones where I have enough from and can sell and the lousy ones (resistance) I use for spirit bonding. There is no unuseful type in my summary. I either use them, sell them or use them to produce new ones.

My real problem with the Materia system is the RNG of it. I can't tell how many hundreds of Materia I have sprit bonded since the Game is out. But still, not one of my crafters got enough Control to make at least 2 star recipies reliably in HQ. I won't even speak of 3 star, so far away from the numbers needed. First it takes ages to get one (maybe one out of 20 bonding attempts) and then it is gone in 5 seconds because a 22% or 11% chance to insert it successfully isn't that much after all.

I like it when I can achieve certain things on my own instead of playing the Market board Game. The crafters I know who can do the 2 and 3 star recipies ALL bought their Materia from the market. Because they did not want to wait that long. They burned millions of GIL to set their characters up. I also know they got their money back from the crafts they made. But still, I refuse to do so. I can't buy a Control III Materia for 80k and burn it in 2 seconds for nothing...just can't, too much of a savy person for that. So I bind my rings and whatnot each week and wait patiently that the God of Materia will bless me with another Control Materia just to see it failing at the end. Again and again.

When I saw the patch notes, I was excited and was hoping they made it so that you can either get a random Materia from the next higher tier or that you can CHOOSE which one you want from the same tier. But what they made makes little to no sense to me, I know I won't use it because instead of burning 5 Materia, I rather use them to spirit bond faster. I don't know why they implement so many RNG elements lately. And I do not know who should benefit from it. Lottery lovers? People with a high frustration resistance? Right now my choices are spending absurd amounts of GIL or relying to a frustrating RNG element. I don't like either option.

Yes this new materia transmutation system is completely ridiculous, it's the dumbest addition to FF14 (and I thought things couldnt get more retarded than Atma quests, but god, I was wrong)
This just proves, yet again, Square Enix's and FF14 Director's RNG Fetish

WE DONT WANT MORE RNG (caps)

Since there is no way to tell what you will get from transmutation, I'm going to stick to the old system of spiritbinding.
The only thing someone might do is, trade the elemental materia and hope for the best.
I'd like to see peoples faces when they trade 5 earth materia and get out 1 water materia, lol.

Oh gosh I love it! I'm making gil gil gil from all that trash materia that's now selling like ice water in a desert.

I haven't read all comments but isn't this how they would start a clean up of content they want to phase out?
Don't see how just thought it a possibility

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Originally Posted by Celaine

Oh gosh I love it! I'm making gil gil gil from all that trash materia that's now selling like ice water in a desert.

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And I was already mad when prices went up from 30-40 to 200-300 some time ago. Since yesterday, no matter what sort of Resistance I, it's starting at 2k on market boards lol. Will not buy a single one for that price but rather spirit bond a tad slower. Gz for finding enough impatient players tho. I am sure this trend won't last long so enjoy it as long as it lasts. As soon as people use 5 Materia III (without resistance) to receive a single resistance II Materia for it, they will stop with this bs lottery. :D Most will do it only until they have their achievement anyways.

Bad mini-games.