After reading a few threads on people wanting to do Materia on U/U items i just don't see it being popular.
Why risk blowing up your U/U items you spent hours trying to get?
Why not just risk blowing up crafted gear that can be easily bought again and you can attempt to Dbl meld?
Why would putting Materia on U/U items automatically make them better?
The Plan
What they should do for U/U items is make an upgrade system for u/u items. This idea could also make old content have use once more. Take the Blade dancer boots from Darkhold I think its like 3 dex and 3 evasion or something like that.
Basically what they could do is make you use items from the respective dungeon to upgrade U/U item's to make them better than materia items. So Lets take those blade dancer boots from darkhold with 3 Dex and 3 evasion and see what they could look like upgraded.
How it works.
Lv 0: 3 dex 3 evasion: Obtain item from chest.
Lv. 1: 8 DEX 8 Evasion: Recluse Hippogryph Hide x3, Diamond Hedgemole Quills x4, Alpgrot Orobon Skin x3
Lv. 2: 13 Dex 13 Evasion: Recluse Hippogryph Hide x6, Diamond Hedgemole Quills x8, Alpgrot Orobon Skin x3
Lv. 3: 18 Dex 18 Evasion: Hardened Ogre Skin x5, Ogre horn x2, Ogre Claws x6.
Lv. 4: 23 Dex 23 Evasion: Batraal Skins x5, Batraal horn x2, Batraal wings x6
Lv. 5 28 Dex 28 Evasion: Batraal Heart x1, Ogre Soul x1. (Maybe the last upgrade could let you choose an bonus stat of your choice)
How the actual upgrade should be taken care of.... I'm not sure but i would think Npc would be good to get this done for a small fee. That could also help remove gil from the game.
Conclusion
1. This system would make U/U and U gear more worth while.
2. This system could make content last much longer.
3. Adds long term goals to the game.
Some of you might argue I could just dbl meld 2 evasion Materia on my shoes but, you can't put Dex on that. I feel that are plenty of good items in the game if only they had better stats on them.
Option B
Just increase the base stats of all U/U gear so they are better than double melded gear. I think this would be the best and easiest solution for the dev team.
Thanks for reading. Choco-boco-lina!!!!! WARK.