Quote Originally Posted by NovaLevossida View Post
You say that, but with hunts being the only reasonable way of getting the grade 6 materia you want, I don't think this line of thinking applies to 4.0. Moreover, you only lost 3 stats if you used grade 4 vs. grade 5 in HW. Now it's a 28 point loss on grade 5 vs. grade 6. You could say that they've incentivized hunts more than ever.
There is the daily hunts that will help you pick the grade 6 materia you want. Though it will take longer as it take 400 Centurio Seals to get 1. BUT, you can also use the HW hunts to increase your daily intake of seals.
I personally use the daily hunts as a way to help get those materia faster, and just in case I don't make it to the A/S rank on time due to load times/not seeing it called out.