What's the point of materia anyway? Everyone just uses the same materia as everyone else, so it's not like it creates diversity or customisation as advertised. It's basically just a replacement to the age old HQ +3 process, only it takes up inventory space and is even more devastatingly dependent on Random Number Generator. I just personally never saw what the point of Materia was from the vantage point of the devs.

Obviously it's just such a nightmare to balance to the point where they have to be incredibly restrictive about it. And the restrictions that make it balanced are the same restrictions that make it redundant. Waste of dev time.

I can't believe they made all recipes dated and spent several patches of development just for this. Oh well, that's their prerogative I guess.