Let us add materia sockets to items?

[Dragon_Lord]

*Sigh* There is no reason for all items to not have at least one slot. The only thing I can think of is that they are afraid of making the characters too powerful. One slot, in a blue item, is not going to break the bank. Adding the creation of slots in items is just another headache in this already high learning curve game. Keep it simple and have them add one slot to green and blue items, and others that don't have any as needed.

Notice that I did not mention the Relics, well convincing them to add a slot is like pulling your own teeth. LoL

[Teykos]

*Sigh* There is no reason for all items to not have at least one slot. [...]

Yes, there is a very good reason not to give them a slot. If you compared the stats on the Aetherial and green items with the white equivalents, the non-tradeskilled items have stats comparable to if you had slightly overmelded some materia onto your white item. There's no reason not to expect them not to do something similar with the 50+ gear if they decided to put in a slot.

Which means if they added materia slots to looted items, you're going to see a stat reduction anyway for each potential slot, guaranteed, in the name of versatility. When you have a looted/bought piece of item versus a tradeskilled piece of item of the same tier, the tradeskilled one has always had the better potential. That and the crazy overmelded gear with 5+ main stat materia in 1.0 is probably why they capped the tradeskilled versions 20 ilvls below the highest available looted one and put in stat caps that also apply to materia.