Quote Originally Posted by Xenor View Post
Games need negatives to keep balance. You can't have it all with no risk. In a game where items can be spam synthed there has to be some way of removing them from the server otherwise you end up with situations where items are worthless, like the crab bow on my server that goes for 35k now. With recipes being simplified it will be even easier to spam synth things. I can see tier 4 materia being worth more than most gear so I don't see why it's a big issue. You probably won't be able to attach materia to raid gear so you'll not be losing super rare gear.
As I said, it's not fun, but rather a type of "necessary evil", though I'd argue that it's not quite as necessary as you may think. FFXI doesn't have item decay and I'm sure it still has a much more functional economy than XIV does. BoE/P (bind on equip/pick up) based games, on the other hand, typically have a majority of the gear coming from outside the economy. It works because you have to actually be able to beat the toughest content to get access to the best stuff. If HQ gear with materia ends up being the best, I'll bet everything I own we'll get complete gear domination by a tiny legit elite along with a handful of gil buyers.