Quote Originally Posted by Lerend View Post
Honestly, with the way the materia system works we'll NEED more HQ product in the market. It was fine in XI that HQs were super rare because once one was created, it only left the market if someone either quit the game and took it with them, or someone was banned with it. In order to keep them scarce, the number of them available had to be kept low via the crafting mechanics.

However, FFXIV has the materia system, where min/max-ers and endgame players are constantly blowing up 30+ items while hoping for a double meld. So yes, there will be a lot more HQ results floating around, but its the double+ melded HQs that fill that "special" role, as the majority of the base HQs are going to wind up exploding during melds anyway. It just makes sense from a risk vs reward vs unmeldable U/U balance standpoint to make the HQs easier to create because we're going to blow most of them up and immediately take them out of the market anyway. Double Meld HQ > U/U > Single Meld HQ ~= Double Meld Normal > Single Meld Normal seems like a pretty solid hierarchy of gear quality to me.
Said it's just me, I prefer harder HQ (scarce) and double/triple meld (even harder).
If HQ is going to have better stats after patch 1.21 compared to the current broken one, then it should be harder or at least keep it the same as before, which makes more sense to me.

Unless we are talking about easier HQ final product with all HQ mats, but the HQ mats should be hard to procure, probably harder than current one. Those HQ mats that can be farmed are not consider hard imo.