I can commiserate - I never melded any of my leveling equipment both because i knew it wasn't worthwhile to deal with materia until end-game and because it meant shouting and tracking down other players which is always going to be something of a barrier.

An NPC that can do basic melding would definitely have players like me getting a lot more use of grade 1-3 materias and it'd make it a lot easier to just throw some Vit or main stat onto a piece of leveling gear for the hell of it. BUT, I would NOT like to see this hypothetical npc in my opinion. There has to be a better way to encourage participation in the Materia system that doesn't remove the player/player interaction element of the whole thing. Losing that would be too big of a cost.


I'd like to see a system where you can request melds from players and fulfill requests for melds - much like the current market board. Something where you might have to leave an item on the 'Materia Board' for a few hours while you wait for a player to fulfill the request, and maybe post an attached donation to anyone that does. This kind of system would encourage participation more than what we have now (shouting in a populated area) but it would retain Crafters/other players as the sole participants.

tldr: removing player/player interaction from an MMO is not the way to handle this issue.