Quote Originally Posted by Meow_Zedong View Post
I believe the point is to earn spiritbond value on your Solid Scale now, since it is the best, and then convert it into materia once it isn't the best anymore. They are constantly adding new gear into the game.
If the Materia crafting system is that simple one-to-one idea like you said, then it will be only needed once when new gears are released with new updates (like every 6 months or even more than a year). However, so far it doesn't look like this way...

It seems that players are encouraged to use this system to customize their favor equipments into different specific purposes. Say a GLA wants a defense-oriented Scale Mail for tanking HNM, so he needs to get one Scale Mail with the best defense status first and then attach defense-related Materia upon it. On the other hand, an attack-oriented Scale Mail may also be needed for farming or fast-clear purposes, then the GLA needs to get one Scale Mail with good attack status and attack-related Materia. If one armor can be attached more than one Materia (which can make players have more freedom to customize their purpose-oriented equipments), players are then required to spend extra time on the equipments other than their favor ones just for making Materia only.

In my opinion, using Materia on equipments to customize purpose-oriented ones is a very good idea. However, the earning spiritbond value and convert equipments into Materia part kinda doesn't make much sense except making players spend more time and energy to grind more points on multiple things...