To Square Enix, these are the reasons why I am currently unsubbed from the FF14.

[MomomiMomi]

In terms of crafting, I do enjoy the materia system. I generally don't do a lot of penta-melding because I craft for fun and not to make money, and I can't afford it. But I'll do a lot of +1 melding or +2 on accessories to gain some slight advantage. The fact that it has a prohibitive cost is what makes it interesting. If it was trivial to max-meld everything, you'd just do that and move on. On the other hand, while I was crafting my two-star crafting gear, I had to decide how much to rely on grade 5 materia (which has a chance of loss upon removal), how much to overmeld, and which pieces were better off as yellow scrip gear compared to the previous crafted set. That's interesting because it requires real choice and there are real risks. Because I craft fairly conservatively, I waited a long time to do this and spent very little (probably lost a few dozen grade IV materia and little else). But if you wanted to be on the bleeding edge of crafting, that was an option as well. That's the epitome of good design to me.

For all other purposes than crafting, I can take or leave materia melding. I find the requirements a bit annoying for gathering, and I don't do any combat content that's hard enough for it to matter whether I melded my gear or not, honestly.

You wrote quite a lot here to basically say "you either do it or you don't." I don't see how that's an interesting decision to make. Good design should assume that the players will want to choose to do it, and make the process of doing it fun and interesting.

The interesting decisions should come in the form of which materia to meld, not if you will meld or not.

[Talraen]

You wrote quite a lot here to basically say "you either do it or you don't." I don't see how that's an interesting decision to make. Good design should assume that the players will want to choose to do it, and make the process of doing it fun and interesting.

The interesting decisions should come in the form of which materia to meld, not if you will meld or not.

It does. If you're not overmelding, you have to mostly focus on Craftsmanship and Control in order to hit minimum requirements for crafts. But if you are overmelding, your main focus is probably going to be CP, because CP makes the biggest difference. The order in which you meld also matters quite a bit in terms of how much it's going to cost. No matter how you do it (and there are many options), getting to the highest crafting tiers is difficult.

[MomomiMomi]

Ah, irony. How you tickle me. Someone doesn't meld and thinks it's a good system, while I do meld and think it's a terrible system.