Better Materia System

[Shougun]

Subjective. I see nothing wrong with the materia market.

And you just described exactly what is wrong with your proposal. This would require the total rebalancing of all materia to account for the fact that you're guaranteed to be able to 5x-meld anything. Materia are tuned to be on the strong side because it is difficult to get highly melded gear. With your system, materia would have to be nerfed into oblivion since anyone can have it with no risk or effort involved.

Probably caught my post before i edited it some more.

Each item would have determined slots, so no you wouldn't get 5 slots unless SE wanted you to have 5 slots.

Also materia wouldn't be nerfed into oblivion, have you played WoW? The enchanting system isn't nerfed into oblivion its quite powerful and useful. While the difference in enchant and this is you can carry yours over - however to get higher tiers of materia you would need that lower tier materia in a new project or high quality ingredients. I expect under my system materia would be quite expensive (and thus prized) but it would offer you the guarantee and not some random chance to blow 10 gil or 10 million gil.

I'm not talking about the market for materia I'm talking about the market for melded gear - which is bonkers because of the % chance. I dont want everything to be cheap therefore the materia price should/would be high - however it would be consistent.

So little risk? Yes, No effort? Hardly - I envision a tier 4 of a general stat would be a few mil or more to buy.