i actually would rather they balancing materia system. All contents drops aren't useless...they're just very weaker than multimelded gear. IMO materia bonuses should be lowered to like STR I = +1, STR II = +2, STR III = +3, STR IV = +4 and STR V = +5, having bonuses even to what you can find on these gears.

This way these gears would be even to a crafted gear with 2-3 materias.

But, to not make crafted gear worthless, would be nice having combination bonuses between materias so a certain combination would also generate an additional effect (example: STR + fire resist = additional effect: chance of dealing fire damage) that cannot be obtained by melding just one materia. This would also nnot only prevent the brainless stacking of the same materia we see now but also add value to those "chocobo down" and similar materias.

Also, i would love to see the spiritbond reseting after every meld (but not reseting upon trade for melding purposes) and the success rate being proportional to spiritbond (the spiritbond gain rate would drop after every meld) so a player could potentially target a 5 materia gear if he's willing to spend enough time with that gear (by enough time i'd say like 2 months worth of killing for someone that plays 2hrs/day). This way the risk of meld failure would be even to players' lazyness...if he wants to be safe he just need to raise spiritbond more for a better success rate, up to the time it will be full and success rate will become 100%. This would also apply even to the first meld...no spiritbond = even first meld having minimal chance of success.