Matria is needed?

[Powercow]

There is however one point someone raised earlier. That I'll admit even I hadn't realised is that tier 6 materia actually has better stats than tier 7. (All my 520 cryptbunker has to melds derp!!) And can be removed with 100% success apparantly.

So this then becomes an issue of player awareness players don't know they can meld there stuff with absolutely zero cost or zero potential loss.

Yeah that's why I'm confused. T6 materia are dirt cheap and you can just keep recycling them. Getting one T7 DH materia will pay for an entire suite of T6 materia. I'm not saying overmeld your level 75 crafted gear, but the "NO MATERIA AT ALL EVER!" crowd just comes off as... not even selfish, but overtly spiteful. Like they're harming themselves more than anyone, but they're still bringing down their party. Utterly confounding.

[Dzian]

Yeah that's why I'm confused. T6 materia are dirt cheap and you can just keep recycling them. Getting one T7 DH materia will pay for an entire suite of T6 materia. I'm not saying overmeld your level 75 crafted gear, but the "NO MATERIA AT ALL EVER!" crowd just comes off as... not even selfish, but overtly spiteful. Like they're harming themselves more than anyone, but they're still bringing down their party. Utterly confounding.

Again I think that comes down to the lack of value or worth in gear. Everything you get is ultimately just trash you'll throw away tomorrow.. It has no value or worth so theres no sense in investing in it..

Perhaps not the most appropiate terminolgy but melding gear is like polishing a t**d. it's still going to be a t**d no matter how much you polish it. meldiing is the same.
Gear is just throw away trash. no matter how much you meld it.. it's still just going to get thrown away tomorrow.

If you want players to care more then you need to make gear feel powerful and valuable and not just a piece of throw away trash..

In essence you could look back to 1.2 where melding was super expensive because if you failed everything went boom.. But back then players dumped literally millions of gil into melding something because they knew it would hold its value and lhave a decent life span.. here you cant get players to spend 1000 gil on melds because everything they have is just going to be thrown away so quickly.

So if you want players to meld. you need to change the progression to something that makes gear more valuable and worthwhile instead of just another piece of throw away junk. this would also have the added bonus of combatting the tradmill monotomy that more and more players are growing ever tired of..