Crafting is dead

[Kenji1134]

Maybe... just maybe... the upcoming mess of a crafting system could become "tolerable" IF every single crafted piece came with 5 materia slots.
In order to produce a "worthwhile" piece of equipment via crafting, you must get past the materials timesink (often time/stat gated), successfully HQ it (requiring high stats and most likely some LUCK), and then meld 5 pieces of IV/V materia onto it, which requires either a retarded amount of money OR a retarded amount of luck.

Lets suppose that ALL crafted gear past 50 came with 5 guaranteed materia slots. Now once you get the HQ item, you just need to obtain the materia and stick it on.
Then how do we continue to cycle materia through the system?
Well we have Mutamix. And lets say that while we did all our stuff in Ishgard he figured out how to remove (some) of the RNG aspect of combining materia.
Lets say that if you bring him 3 random materia of grade A, he came combine them into another random materia with a 75% chance of being grade A, and a 25% chance of being grade A+1, but still random.
Now if you bring him 3 of the same materia of grade A, he can combine them into a materia which is the same as what you gave him, but with a 25% (maybe 50%) chance to be Grade A+1.

And there you go, all materia has value! Random useless materia? Combine 3 to have a chance at something better. 3 specific materia? Combine them for a "reasonable" chance at getting a grade... upgrade.

Now crafters have some purpose in making readily customizable gear, and the materia market can naturally flow between grades while removing more than 66% of the materia floating around.
Its almost funny isnt it? Given a 50% chance to raise the grade of your materia, you would on average spend 6 materia to obtain 1. That is the equivalent of failing a meld 83% of the time! But you wouldnt care! Once you succeed, YOU ACTUALLY SUCCEED and have the result you wanted! You didnt even consider that you effectively failed your last 5 melds every single time!