Quote Originally Posted by ViolentDjango View Post
Well, I'm trying to spirit bond my level 1 starting armor and I've taken two classes almost to level 10 and barely have 25% -- I wouldn't say its completely balanced. Low level gear should be able to hit spiritbond by the time you upgrade - -who wants to trounce around in starting gear for longer than they have to?
Yes, this is what I'm talking about. Folks with r50's just don't understand that if you are a New Player, you can't just grind out Materia on a higher level class because you don't have a higher level class!

At the current rate of SpiritBond, a new character/class will always be "behind the curve", either wearing low level gear too long in order to gain spiritbond/materia or the will never gain SPiritbond because they upgrade their gear before the Bond is full.

In another thread I made this suggestion:

For lower level gear (sub r20 or r30), instead of basing the "Bond Rate" on exp per kill, have the SpiritBond increase with each level you gain.

Essentially divide the progress into 1/8ths and every 8 levels you have fully "Bonded" gear that you can make into Materia for your new gear. I chose 8 levels because that seems to be the general rate that new gears become available.

This would only work (if at all) for low level players and gear so make the cutoff at r20 or r30. From then on continue to base the Bond-Rate on exp per kill as it is now. That way higher levels (esp r50's) can grind/farm materia to their hearts content (or masochistic madness).