Reducing the price of materia

ive been thinking for a while on how to reduce the price of materia, and ive come up with a simple.. ( and probably incredibly unoriginal ) idea to knock materia prices and demand down a few pegs

allow the use of additional, and higher rank catalysts in the melding process

say i want to meld a rank 1 materia in an overmeld #2, this would be a 24% chance of success with your standard grade 1 carbonized matter, instead of just using a single grade one, i want to be able to use up to 3 of any grade.

using a single grade 2 matter would increase the chance by 1%, using a grade 3 would increase it by 2% and a grade 4 and 5 by 3 and 4% respectively

now this alone wont be enough to budge the prices in any fashion, hence the idea of using multiple catalysts.

each addition catalyst would increase the success chance by a percentage equal to its own rank, so in the above situation of a rank 1 materia overmeld #2 with a base success chance of 24%...

3 rank 1 catalysts would give a 26% chance (0 base increase +2 for extra rank 1s)
3 rank 2 catalysts would give a 31% chance (1 base increase +4 for extra rank 2s)
3 rank 3 catalysts would give a 36% chance (2 base increase +6 for extra rank 3s)
3 rank 4 catalysts would give a 41% chance (3 base increase +8 for extra rank 4s)

as a different example, bob is being picky and wants to meld a 5th rank 4 materia in his offhand tool.. with a base success chance of 4%

while rank 1-3 catalysts are worthless for this, bob would still triple his success rate to 12% by using 2 additional rank 4 catalysts

this increased succes chance in melding would knock down the ammount of materia consumed for overmelding a decent ammount, in addition to providing a higher demand for catalysts which currently are available in over abundance

As much as we the melders often hate the RNG of melding, the game developers chose to keep rates random and generally low as a gil sink and economic stimulator, for better or for worse. It's not just an evil game design, it's an attempt to keep the market flowing long-term.

I've spent tens of millions of gils on (failed) melds over my FFXIV career like a lot of crafters/raiders and I can't honestly say I think it should be easier to do.

Not too sure about this, but when SE's decision to remove i70 and above gears from guaranteeing an IV grade materia upon conversion, you can be sure that their intention is to prevent too many people from having pentamelded IV gears.

So I don't think we will be seeing any price intervention from SE any soon.

they just decreased the price from ~900k per materia down to 500k on odin, by handing them out via 2.5 mainstory

the next story arc will also provide other grade IV materia which will lower the price of spellspeed/gatherer/crafter/Vit IV materia

The only problem I see with your solution is that it offers an increased chance of melding grade IVs. If the chance is increased, more people are going to attempt to do it, therefore, more materia will be flying off the MB. When that happens, prices rise. Just look at MCD and Ehctal Sealants. Yes they have dropped in price as time has gone on but they are more in demand now than before and the prices are still 3-400K+ each. Only way to lower prices is for SE to provide another method to obtain them, give them out (as they did in 2.5) or increase their drop rate.

i think they should encourage more spiritbonding. For starters, crafting and gathering need to be DRASTICALLY faster, possibly via a bonus for HQ items. Second, folks need to spiritbind in dungeons more. Pretty much the only way we SB currently is Urth's Fount, which only supports so many people. Dungeons can support a near infinite number, but there's a strong stigma against spiritbinding. So, I'd likely go with the following changes:

1: split up the hard roulette and possibly low level roulette. Currently, main scenario and extreme are the only duty roulettes that have a consistent level, making it hard to keep some spiritbond gear available. Instead, we could divide it up based on the craftable levels: 55 & 60 for level 55, level 70 and 80 for 70, and level 90 for 90, with the current level 100 extremes eventually rolling into there. This allows more people to SB without gimping their tomestones too much.

2: disallow SBing DoL/DoH gear via combat. This should only be done if the above changes to crafting/gathering SB are done. This should somewhat alleviate the stigma of useless SBers in inappropriate gear. I may even go as far as to say the gear must have your main stat on it (albeit tanks can SB strength accessories.)

3: Be more aggressive with item level sync. I'd go as far to say sync to the next higher tier. I expect to get the most flak for this suggestion, but as it stands I've gotten flak for wearing level 55 gear instead of level 110 in CM (nevermind that I had a level 110 weapon, and the dungeon is tuned for level 50, so I was still overgeared for it). If the gap between best for the dungeon and spiritbond capable isn't that great, people won't mind spiritbinders. Case in point, nobody minds if you spiritbind while running low level dungeons :P

I think making all these changes would encourage people to SB as they do their tasks, increasing the amount of materia on the market and lowering prices :)

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

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I've been accused of not pulling my weight for wearing i70 crafted gear in Brayflox HM. Level syncing to the gear level that drops from the instance should be the minimum in my opinion, but I'd like to see them sync to the ilvl it was intended for.

Honestly, I'd like to see this change just so the instances are more challenging. I see more groups wipe on Arum Vale and Stone Vigil NM than I do on any level 50 instance. I'd like to extend this to primals so that people learn mechanics instead of out gearing the instance. That's what Echo is for after all.

my main issue with spirit bind is that I take a class from lvl 1-50, spirit binding gear along the way, only to donate to GC or even simply discard, because it will likely be junk, like a 1 or one of the elementals.
I would love a tier system to spirit bind. That way I can get awat with wearing an ilvl 80 item for over a month and not feel like im wasting my time. I have alot of gear from lvling my main, that is more or less 100% usless.

If they wanted to make SB'ing in dungeons a thing, all they have to do is allow the tome and dungeon drop gear to be convertible into materia.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

2: disallow SBing DoL/DoH gear via combat. This should only be done if the above changes to crafting/gathering SB are done. This should somewhat alleviate the stigma of useless SBers in inappropriate gear. I may even go as far as to say the gear must have your main stat on it (albeit tanks can SB strength accessories.)

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Nooooooooooooo I go out almost every night and farm for about 45 min with my chocobo wearing full set of crafting or gathering gear and my Zodiac bow, Bird gets Xp, I get SB materia for crafting / gathering and I get items that drop from the guys I farm.

yeah they should allow the dyngeon level 50 60 and 70 gear be converted

I'm ok with SOMETHING increasing meld chance. To be fair, how come a 4-star crafter with their lucis tool has the same chance to meld as someone naked with a weathered MH tool? Whether chances can change based on gear or food or another catalyst, I think they should do something. We've been melding Tier IV materia on i70 stuff back in Sep 2013 and nothing has changed here in Feb 2015. Except that now we need a lot more Tier IV materia to do the same job. Wouldn't mind seeing some Tier V materia, but that won't happen before the expansion now.