We've not been told the successive % failure rates for each piece of materia yet have we? If we have (and I've missed it) disregard my post.

If we haven't then by the response on the forums I guess people instinctively feel that the degradation goes 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%, which are sucky odds towards the end, hell even 60% is something I'd not bet on. However, for all we know it could go down 5% at a time, or 10%, always giving you slightly more chance to succeed than fail.

Though I agree the loss of gear AND materia is a bit on the harsh side (especially raid/dungeon gear that's a pain enough to get in the first place), I'm waiting to see the -% chance on each materia slot first.

That being said, I'd personally prefer a failed materia meld to of course destroy said materia, but instead of destroying your gear also to instead instantly drop its durability to 0% and tack a hefty cooldown on retrying, or an item debuff for X amount of time. This maintains the same concept as destroyed, or highly damaged, only your damned hard earned item is repairable, not lost, only borked. It stop rage quit (people will rage quit the game over this and less players = bad), it's a Gil sink and honestly it makes more sense from a logic standpoint. "Lemme add this fire enhancing materia to my robes... *WHOOOSH*, as nuts, I burned the sleeves off, lucky my intellect was high enough to stop the flames before it vaporized everything. Oh my robe is still searing hot, I can't concentrate on my spells as much. Mommy!"

Anyway, I'm on the fence until more information. I like risk/reward. But no one likes a disproportional amount of risk/reward.