There are various way they could make the status ailment resist better but ya a lot of materia does come off as junk even though all of it should be useful. But with a system in which anything past 1 has a chance to break the piece of equipment people aren't willing to put things that "may" resist something when they could just put something that actually shows an increase in battle potency.

I'd like them to take materia back into the drawing board and make it a more fun customization system rather then one that's purely based on luck.

Like one system could be you have up to 5 sockets based on the lv of the equpiment with 1 only having one socket and 41+ having 5 sockets. Each socket would only be able to support certain types of materia so rather then have it where you can fit any materia into the first slot it would be something like, for Lancer weapon first slot can only support STR/PIE, 2nd slot can support MND/DEX and so forth. This would give players the option to actually use materia they otherwise might not use as well as make people more willing to want to meld. With this concept in mind they could go about it in two ways. You create a system in which 1-4 have to overlap one another in order to reach grade 4 in which the success rate lowers for each grade you attempt to increase. So while all 1's regardless of how many 1's you have would be 100% adding onto that would slwoly decrease the success rate with Grade 2 being 80%, Grade 3 50% and Grade 4 10%. A break however would not cause a lost in gear it would only cause a chance at breaking the socket in question. So if you fail to meld the grade 2 you have a 10% chance to break it, Grade 3 30% and Grade 4 75%.

The risk factor would still be there but players would have more fun playing around with it rather then a 1-2 Boom!

The other concept which they could use is just allow you to meld the grade 4 but with the same concept this concept would require less materia to reach grade 4 however I do think with the above concept it would increase the desire to create and sell low level gear so basically it would liven up the market since people would then want/have to make low level gear to obtain the grade 1-2 materia.

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Another way they could go about it is create "materia socket" synths in which you can't meld any materia until you first put a socket in place. A socket would vary in quality from a low quality socket that can only hold a grade 1 to a high quality socket that can hold 1-4. With this method one would be able to attach up to 5 sockets would have specific materias you can attach to the piece of gear as long as it's compatible with it.

Basic materia sockets could be
Attribute Socket
M Potency Socket
Physical Potency Socket
Resist Socket
DoL Socket
DoH Socket

This is the problem with melding atm. what's the big deal about losing the piece of gear when we already have a method in which we can do that aka turning them into materia. Why should there be two methods in which gear leaves the system this only works to discourage people from playing with the materia system. If you create a system of items that get destroyed if the melding fails rather then losing the piece of gear people would be more willing to play with the system.

If a person can attacha socket to a piece of gear then meld the materia with a certain success but fail and only lose the materia socket, they would be willing to buy another socket and try again if they know that upon succeeding they can then work on another socket without fear of losing the materia they just attached to their weapon.
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Though I guess perhaps we could combine both concepts and come to this idea.

Give all crafters the ability to create materia sockets, through this method you can do away with them needing to be there to meld the piece of materia because now they are creating a socket in which players can meld the compatible materia into the socket itself. Something like this

Hart Guisrame is a lv 49 weapon. It would start with the following slots
DEX/STR
DEX/PIE
ATT/ACC/Parry
ATT/CRITATT
Parry/ACC/CRITATT

So in this example the Sockets would be
Attribute Socket IV
Attribute Socket IV
Physical Potency Socket IV
Physical Potency Socket IV
Physical Potency Socket IV

So you have these sockets but they are limited to the above so even though you have 2 attribute sockets you wouldn't be able to attach two PIE materia to your Lance since the First socket isn't compatible with it.

In this above concept the Success rate would be as followed 100%/50%/25%/10%/5% with the break rate being 10%/30%/60%/90% on said socket. So if you attempted to socket the 2nd slot and failed there would only be a 10% chance that the socket would break on you. However if the socket does break on you it doesn't make the weapon useless. You can then purchase another socket from the MW and place it where the broken one was. As mentioned earlier with the ability to craft sockets they could create a wide variety so rather then the dull
Attribute I-IV Socket we could have something like
Physical Attrbute I-IV Socket (Slightly increases success rate of melding physical attribute materia)
Magical Attribute I-IV Socket

But Basically there would be a variety of sockets that you could replace your broken one with if you happened to fail the synth but the lucrative economy would only be stronger since more people would be willing to play witha system in which you can salvage your loses and keep on trying rather then an all or nothing concept.
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But ya, I just feel like the materia system could be a greater concept that was sadly cut down to a how lucky are you system. Though that's just my suggestion on how they could make status resist more appealing to use, if there were slots designated to said materia then people would use it just so they could get the most out of the gear they are melding but of course when you can choose between a possible effect and one you know will always go off you'll go with the one that proves itself to be more noticeable rather then one that gives you a 15% chance at even activating. Since in most cases said materia can only be attached to one piece of gear if you managed and felt it was worth it to attach all 15% to 5 and get lucky enough sure you'd have 75% resist to that one ailment but wouldn't you rather have a piece of footwear that gave you 75 magic potency, 125 evasion/magic evasion, 50 healing magic potency, or 150 x element potency.