Is there a conspiracy for lvl capped players to ignore materia?

[Kolsykol]

I think that happens sometimes on Chaos and Light. It's a culture difference.

I play on Light, and just wat?...
People in my experience are very relaxed.

[EorzeaWanderer]

Everyone saying, "It's relatively cheap and easy to meld, why not?" is certainly correct. I do use materia myself.

But there are far more important factors that will contribute to group/personal performance before materia really becomes a thing (in my opinion, happy to have a discussion about it):
1) Tightening up rotation/execution of skills; just learning your job well
2) Making sure you're wearing proper gear (like, no dex accessories on a tank) and meeting the minimum ilevel for duties primarily from your weapon/left-side armor pieces (and not inflating it with relatively weaker but higher ilevel accessories)
3) Wearing the strongest pieces beyond minimum ilevel you have access to

After the above three, we can start to look at materia/food/consumables I feel.

Also, unless you're in that narrow band of content for your job where your level and ilevel are not being synced, the game literally ignores your materia in instanced content. And then, in things like the alliance raids, which don’t have ilevel sync for a given expansion’s content, most people vastly overpower the encounters that were designed for the raid’s minimum ilevel. I always have a chuckle when someone says “Don’t forget your food” at the beginning of Labyrinth of the Ancients, of all places, which was designed for a minimum ilevel of 50, and people are generally rolling into that synced to 130. Even first-timers tend to greatly overpower it with the gear MSQ gives you now. I guess this is off-topic from materia, but the point is, other factors greatly overwhelm these small benefits from materia, food, etc.

I certainly wouldn't label anyone lazy or inconsiderate for not using materia. It's for squeezing out that last few % of power potential in unsynced content after you've dealt with everything else. I would only address it in high-end duties (not duty finder duties).

I don't do Savage so I might not even bother to meld the non-removable* tiers of materia (presumably IX and X) in Endwalker unless it's for a BiS piece for that period in time content-wise. Materia melding involves so many little operations (windows upon windows of selections and confirmations), and in the grand scheme of things it’s not very impactful if you enjoy the game mainly through roulettes/normal content.

*That is, not removable with 100% success rate

[thegreatonemal]

If that's the case why does SE give away top tier materia like candy in normal 80 dungeons ?

For the people that know its value to use and to make getting into higher end content more accessible. When the new players find out the worth of materia they will open their inventory, find that they have a bunch of it and rejoice as they meld and move onto the next piece of content.

[Darkstride]

Not about failing or succeeding. Time is something we all have in limited supply.

I don't disagree that time is limited. I also agree that melding is typically a simple thing to for little to no cost or effort. It seems like a no-brainer.

However, let's not pretend that the % of gains from proper material melding are creating some sort of massive time savings. The biggest factor in efficient content completion is properly playing the job.

I just don't see the need to micromanage others' gearing unless it is content that would actually require the added stat maxing. Maybe I'm the odd one out that doesn't inspect everyone's gear all the time. It just does not matter to me. I care about my own gear and that's it. If other players are clearly dragging behind or underperforming I'm more likely to notice it in their playstyle.

TLDR; I agree with

Imagine checking someone's gear in casual content.

[Limecat]

Materia may as well be removed from the game between the stat crunch, lack of ultra-tuned content, and other streamlining of systems. If such a loss absolutely had to be made up somewhere else, they could just do a global buff on food instead. Materia are not needed in the game's current and upcoming incarnation.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Not about failing or succeeding. Time is something we all have in limited supply.

The difference between melded and unmelded is going to be far less than the difference of competent vs incompetent.

An unmelded competent player will do more damage than a melded incompetent one.

[Asari5]

The difference between melded and unmelded is going to be far less than the difference of competent vs incompetent.

An unmelded competent player will do more damage than a melded incompetent one.

of course... but melding is far easier compared to making a player competent.
a melded incompetent player will do more dmg than an unmelded incompetent one

[Rowde]

Materia may as well be removed from the game between the stat crunch, lack of ultra-tuned content, and other streamlining of systems. If such a loss absolutely had to be made up somewhere else, they could just do a global buff on food instead. Materia are not needed in the game's current and upcoming incarnation.

I'm not advocating for that. I made the snarky comment before, but I do meld my own gear.

I wrote in some other topic here about "things we want that probably won't be added" or some such:
I don't want them to add any more materia in EW with the stat squish happening. Adjust what's there and make them linear... no more only VI or VIII only go in guaranteed slots and first overmeld nonsense. Maybe reserve that for the strongest available material only and shift that up if more materia are added in later expansions.

And tbh... they probably need to put in some kind of materia sink into the game unrelated to gear. Similar to the ARR relic step for example (though that's gear related), but for glamour or some other side content shenanigans.

[Eldevern]

Many people are used to the fact that melded gear is usefull : on crafted gear for extrem/savage/ultimate, on reward gear since they've added this possibility but still it makes sense on extrem/savage/ultimate. For everything else tomes gear and upgraded tomes gear are enough.

Materias make sens for BiS and level cap.

Materias can make the difference for a wipe or a enrage on extrem/savage/ultimate but in alliance raid... sorry but lol, you lose far to many time just by running to bother with melding.

[VirusOnline]

The expert roulettes give you free materias, extracting is easy, yet almost no players I see use materia. Am I taking crazy pills? Also your soulbind is faster when you have materia equipped do what's the deal? Someone please explain why so many choose to not have extra power?

Why do I need extra power when DF is easily completed with no job stone ?
Why do I care to soulbind faster when the extra materia from extraction is only worth 2k gil ?
Leveling players will also be rid of that gear soon so there's no point in melding or a soulbind.
The moment SE made materia easily accessible, its value in every sense of the game and the mechanics surrounding it no longer really matter unless you are doing savage and ultimate content.