Please let us socket materia without crafting

[Defias]

@Suirieko;

Don't you dare mistake my remarks as entitlement.
I have endured, bit & gritted my teeth and suffered all my crafters to 50. And have been preparing myself mentally to suffer the torment once again to lvl 60.

And I didn't give the crafter a dime and because I refused to pay she didn't do the meld. I gave her the tip of a detailed cuss out as a result.

But with folks setting high standards. People are already starting a "You must have _ materia melded to your gear." Meta.
So it's becoming a requirement.
So greedy players are exploiting it as easy money.

However, Materia in this game has honestly been a lackluster feature to begin with.
Considering it is a nod/homage to FF7 it does a horrible job of emulating it.
Not once in FF7 did Cloud and his team stop what they were doing hunt down a crafter and have them stick a ball in a hole.
I sure don't remember Kadaj & his troupe in Advent Children squatting down and melding. They just stuck the materia in their gear and went about their business.

When armor has slots open. I feel players should be able to slot & unslot Materia at will.
When it comes to Overmelding...aka: trying to slot Materia where there is no slot...
Now THAT should require a Crafter.

Now if they added in a materia NPC who can do melds with 100% success when melding to a slot.
NOT when overmelding.
Who charges like the repair NPC.
Let's say 1000gil per meld.
Overmelds being 10k per Materia but like with real crafters has a high chance of failure.
I'd honestly shut my mouth. But even then...that's a band-aid to a bad system.
Materia never should have required a crafter.
Like Chocobo Racing the system is complicated for no honest reason.

And for the record. I don't charge for melds. I don't charge for most of the crafting crap like others in this game.

I deliberately make HQ newbie gear and hand it out to newbies. And crash the market on newbie gear.
No newbie should have to pay 10 or 20k for gear. Period.

I leveled crafts so I could help out newbies, meld (which I want to see go away), and help out friends.

@Ilitsa

My point was that Materia is a direct nod to FF7. But it's done horribly.
As I stated above. It is becoming a requirement.
And while it may give an illusion of choice...
Folks are already stating that _ materia must be in blank slot for _ role/Job. So no...we're all STILL going to be the bland copy & paste of each other once the meta is set in stone.