Inflation Control - Novus weapons needing Materia

[Sibyll]

snip

Relics requiring you to beat HM primals wasn't forcing people to experience old content and was in fact a prerequisite to progressing to the end-game, BCoB. Zenith was admittedly trivial and stupid. However, everything since obtaining the original relic was pretty much a time and gil sink as you describe.

Materia would be less of a garbage design mechanic if they removed the RNG aspect and just made overmelds require progressively more materia of the given grade to achieve the desired effect. First overmeld would need x2, second would need x4, third overmeld would need x8, and fourth overmeld would need x16. At the very least it'd give people a better scope at how much a piece of gear is valued once overmelded. You can't really predict that you are going fail a 20% meld 20 times in a row.

The materia system is part of the reason crafted gear is so niche. It's really hard to go the crafted route when you look at the gil investment from the materia and the tome investment from the mats for a piece of gear that is going to get replaced after a few kills in coil or a few weeks of tome farming.

While are on the topic of bad mechanics, what about elemental resist materia and the Alchemists 2.0 2* recipes, Elemental Wards? Will these ever serve a meaningful purpose? Doubtful.