We don't need a mercy rule we need our normal goods to not cost 10 million in materials AND we need NQ and HQ to matter less. As I mentioned in another post. The only difference in NQ and HQ should be the amount of material required to MAX the stats. Both should be maxable. HQ goods should be trival to max with materia, while NQ goods should be relatively costly to max (but possible). And by costing I mean in the realm of 0.5-2 million in melds... not some insane fictional number.