Quote Originally Posted by Alia View Post
If anything the current system is too lenient. 100% repair with no item degradation makes the items reusable indefinitely. This ofcourse leads to items costing less than the crafting materials, and in turn the demand for the item is much less when items are reuseable. While the duration loss on return seems a bit extreme the repair system itself is too kind.

I suggest that the npc cost for repairing items be adjusted to the cost of material (dark matter) further more npc repairs to decrease the maximum duration of the item with each repair. The advantage of player repair items would be to try to save some of the max duration from being lost and that amount would depend on the player's rank and the item rank. Crafters should also be given a ability for a special repair that can be used once a day when they reach rank 50 or complete some prerequisite in which they will be able to repair the item with out any max dura loss.

With this items will be semi-disposable after using an item for a long period of time you'd have to either throw it away or turn it in to materia. Which would increase the need for carrying multiples of that item and still keep the vital role of crafters in repairing for rare items.
They are going to be doing something like this already with the Materia system coming out next patch. Instead of the gear degrading like you said, players will turn old gear into Materia which will keep gear and demand high, or higher on a gear by gear basis.