Materia Suggestion

[Phafi]

Could we add another way to acquire materia other than spiritbonding?
For example: Add Cracked Materia* as a reward exchangeable through Allied Seals.

Cracked I - 100 Seals
Cracked II - 150 Seals
Cracked III - 300 Seals
Cracked IV - 500 Seals

This would allow players to make slow progress toward valuable materias such as determination and critical hit rate while doing weekly content such as the Hunt in order to cap their weekly soldiery.

*for those of you who don't know, the Calamity Salvager in each nation will exchange Cracked Materia X for a any materia of the same grade.

SECONDARY IDEA

Add Cracked Materia as random drops in treasure chests during dungeons mixed in with those X-potions and Hi-elixirs.

[Sholah]

Yeah, take away one of the truly useful things that DoH can do. SBing is already easy enough for anyone to do.

[Azper]

I like the idea. Nothing worse than spiritbonding 2 or 3 sets of gear that you gathered the materials for and made yourself, only to have it yield all junk materia. I'm looking at you, Elemental Resistance materia. >.>

Alternatively, make it so spiritbonded items can yield the cracked materia as a possible outcome.

[Lemuria]

Yeah, take away one of the truly useful things that DoH can do. SBing is already easy enough for anyone to do.

Err... wait, since when could DoH do anything special with regards to spiritbonding? We can meld it sure, but unless we can equip it (hint, most DoW/DoM stuff we can't) we can't SB it.

I rather like the idea myself, since it gives people a chance to get a specific type of materia rather than relying on the hit and miss conversion process. Mind you, they could just as easily make Mutamix not completely worthless with his materia fusions, but I guess that would require actual work rather than 5 minutes at the office.

[Sholah]

Err... wait, since when could DoH do anything special with regards to spiritbonding?

Where do you think that gear you're spiritbonding comes from? You can buy the lower level stuff for the lower tier materias (which you can SB full sets of in just a few minutes if you know what you're doing) from merchants, but for tier 4 materias, that needs crafted gear.

[gamesmart]

Where do you think that gear you're spiritbonding comes from? You can buy the lower level stuff for the lower tier materias (which you can SB full sets of in just a few minutes if you know what you're doing) from merchants, but for tier 4 materias, that needs crafted gear.

Getting Tier IV materia in fact does not REQUIRE a crafter - item level 45 and up gear can give such materia, and some of it can be bought from vendors or gotten from levequests, for example these gloves. (However, crafters can make the same gear for less gil and less time, as HQ + melded does spiritbond faster.)

On topic: I do like the idea, but I'm not sure if I like the idea of using Allied Seals (I think it'd set a precedence of using it in everything a la FATEs if it hasn't been set already) - maybe exchanging perhaps a certain number of materia for a cracked materia of that tier, or a certain larger number for a cracked materia of a higher tier?

[Felis]

Because you can exchange a cracked materia IV in any materia IV of your wish (not just a random materia IV) it need to be rare to get, difficult to get or behind a grind.

I wish I would have bought much more materias during 1.23 before the last save ^^

[Tetsaru]

I just wish they would just flesh out the materia system in general:

- Why does all materia have to involve stat-stacking? Why not have materia with effects such as "10% chance on auto-attack to inflict Bleed" or "increases attack power when HP is below 50%," etc. Some of them could be incredibly rare and valuable based on the effects they bestow.

- Why can't we put materia on non-crafted gear? We were able to customize our Novus relics to an extent...

- Why can't we convert non-crafted gear? In 1.0, we were eventually able to convert primal weapons; why was this taken away? This could also provide a means to obtain certain "rare" materia.

- Why do elemental resistance materia still exist when they have little to no significance? Primary stat materia (STR, VIT, etc.) is also largely useless aside from i70/i90 jewelry that no one uses due to the built-in stat caps on gear and the availability of better gear through hunts, etc.

- Why do we have Grade 5 Carbonized Matter when we don't even have Tier V materia yet?

[Xatsh]

People should not have the choice to choose which materia they get. It would all but destroy the materia market.

Should there be other way to get materia. In my opinion should be special materia like +blockrate, +enmity, -enmity (you know all the stuff they removed from the game). Make that stuff come from boss drops or something.

But 500 seals for the choice of your materia is horrible. Maby 2000 seals for a tier 5, even that seems to little with the joke it is to get allied seals. If you are going to deal a blow to the economy the alternative has to be high. so I would say 500 grade 1, 750 grade 2, 1000 grade 3, 1500 grade 4, 2000 grade 5 if you are doing it that way.

[Barboron]

This would allow players to make slow progress toward valuable materias such as determination and critical hit rate while doing weekly content such as the Hunt in order to cap their weekly soldiery.

This would be anything but slow. They need to not add any other rewards to hunt simply because of how easy it is to obtain the rewards. Any valuable rewards added would cause a huge influx of players back into the hunts and you will see rage post, after rage post, after rage post, after...well, you get that idea, on the forums about people "pulling early" and hunts being so OP that "casual" players can get stuff they shouldn't.

On top of that, allowing people to select a materia would destroy their values on the market. Spiritbonding, for those who don't want to grind too much, could prove to be a good way to obtain gil. Sure there already is the crafting market but you need a huge injection of gil to start your crafting classes to begin with and having everyone do crafts would then destroy the trades.

Simply put, for now I think it should continue as is unless the materia obtained through cracked materia was random, much like materia transmutation. As for getting Grade IV, I don't think that would be a good idea but that's just my own personally opinion.