Eliminate materia subtiers!

[Rinsui]

Materia is great. Materia is beautiful. And it glows in the dark.

But why the hell do we need 7 subtiers for each of the 4 tiers of materia?
Why is there IV materia with stats +13, +14,+15, +16, +17, +18, +19 and +20?

Not only does it take away inventory space, it also is pretty annoying to double-check
every seller for the exact value sold (because not everybody uses the last-digit-markers,
and some try to scam).

First they do away with +1 and +2 drops because they clutter up the inventory, and the
next day they intoduce a gazillion of materia that doen't stack and is an inconvenience
to sort through.

Strange logic >.>

I am pretty happy about materia per se (although it is a tad overpowered), but would be
very happy to have the variation toned down to a more manageable level...

[Jinko]

Agreed, there is already a thread regarding this though.

[Frein]

I already made a topic about this but I agree completely. It makes absolutely no sense to have tiers within tiers like this. It's incredibly annoying both from a logistics and a character development perspective and for the life of me I cannot figure out why they decided to make it like this. You'd think the "default idea" is to have standardized materia and somebody had to actually suggest to further divide them. What was his/her/its reasoning I can never figure out on my own. It boggles the mind.

[Frisque]

just curious: wouldn't the materia take up space regardless? I didn't think it was meant to stack...

[MariyaShidou]

The upside to this is that even within the tier, the lower quality Materia offer a higher chance for Melding. Say a Tier IV +20 will have a 17% chance, then a Tier IV +13 will have a 22% chance, you get less +4 but you gain +5% chance upon Melding.

[Charismatic]

It's pretty obvious to me why they do this, to make an endless grind for the "ultimate gear" as far as min-maxers are concerned. If every touch of rage IV was the best touch of rage IV it would take less time, grind parties for materia and broken forbidden gear to get the "best of the best"
It creates a near endless grind to get super maxed out gear which keeps crafters relevant.

[Rinsui]

It's pretty obvious to me why they do this, to make an endless grind for the "ultimate gear" as far as min-maxers are concerned.

Understandable, yes. But not funny when it makes storing, searching and retrieving a nightmare.

[Physic]

Understandable, yes. But not funny when it makes storing, searching and retrieving a nightmare.

then the problem is in storing searching and retrieving, i think the sub tiers make materia workable, because you can make a lot, if it was only 4 per stat. I think they said they are going to alter market wards, item search for more info, and as far as not stacking, i think they did that to make sure they circulate, either use it, sell it or get rid of it, is what they were going for.

[TessaJalloh]

rather than do away with the subtiers... perhaps materia having it's own tab, like crystals do, would be more appropriate. I mean, materia is just another type of crystal right? and i can carry thousands of those.

[Frein]

rather than do away with the subtiers... perhaps materia having it's own tab, like crystals do, would be more appropriate. I mean, materia is just another type of crystal right? and i can carry thousands of those.

It's not a matter of storage space. We have a million inventory slots now. The problem is that the whole subtier system makes absolutely no sense. Why make it more complicated than is necessary? Charismatic raises the point that they made subtiers despite the numerous problems it causes because they wanted to, no matter the cost, make min-maxing an impossible grind.

Personally, the thought of paying a large amount of gil for a piece of non-optimal materia only to have it suddenly become obsolete when an optimal one appears on the wards sickens me and it annoys me to no end that SE tries to push me in this direction.