So before I get started I'd first like to say that this is more getting an idea of how everyone else feels about this rather than openly bashing something.

So I tried to get a steel chainmail to hold 2 materia just for the hell of it as I wanted to try out multi melding as I just got my augmented melder and here's what happened.

I put in one Vitality materia Rank 1 with +3 Vit into the armor. No issue's cause the first one is 100% chance to go in. The second one I tried to put in was a Rank 2 Vit materia with +7 Vit and I only had a 27% chance for it to go in.

Now this put me off quite a bit but this was for testing so what the hell right? Well... BOOM! everything gone just like that. Now this again was for testing so I could care less about it but this is where it got to me.


~ 2 materia of the same type ( I heard you get a bonus for that )
~ Rank 1 then a Rank 2 supposedly also gets a bonus for being in order
~ Both are fairly low level and still had a horrible rate

Now I'm more than willing to accept that I may or may not have done something wrong and I know that luck plays a rather large role in melding materia but does it seem to anyone that the failure rates on melding are a hair excessive?

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it the point that it's supposed to be challenging yet rewarding for those who complete it? As far as I can tell almost if not nobody has gotten 5 rank 4 materia in any gear and with these rates never will and even then just getting 3 materia in sounds like hell and then some.


What's worse is if you fail you don't just lose the materia you were trying to meld which in the higher tiers can get expensive, no you lose ALL of it flat out. I'd call this a money sink but frankly I'd rather have a level 99 goblin rob me at knife point, it'd be cheaper in the long run.

Even AION wasn't this bad, if you blew up your enchanting stone you lost the stone and the last enchantment but that was it. I heard they even implemented some items you could buy to increase your chances of succeeding. Here it seems hopeless.

So trying to look at this logically, taking the maximum potential in to account vs the millions of gil, time and items required to get crafted gear that would compete or pass dungeon gear, to me at least it seems like there's no point in bothering with materia at all.

Let's face it assuming you have a good link could you not run CC or AV and grab some Darklight gear or something similar? I know some people will agree with me and some won't and I accept that but to me it doesn't seem like the materia system is worth anything at this point save for maybe belt melds.


Anyway I'm looking for feedback so what's everyone else think about the current system and does anyone have any suggested changes that could be made to make it more user friendly?