Pretty much screwed when it comes to melding and upgrading your equipment. The whole "well they're making melding easier" still doesn't change the fact that gear and materia will be blown up going for melds. Basically you finally get your melded gear. You wear it and use it in Raids, you wear it and use it while spiritbonding or farming or really anything involving actual fighting. Down the road you make an even better meld, now you have your old gear and you cannot sell it to recoup any loses you've made or to make any sort of profit. Nor can you give the gear to a friend or LS mates to 'upgrade' their gear.

So our only answer is to take our double/triple melded gear and turn it into materia itself. Regardless of whatever chances they give gear to turn into certain materia, no one would rather get materia as payment than selling it on the Market Wards and getting gil. Basically I see the new Soulbound system hurting the economy, there's going to be less melded gear sold on the Auction House/Market Wards simply because people cannot sell their items. Crafters and anyone down the road will be able to take gear and meld it and sell, but if you put it on it's game over and your gil is loss.

I don't like it and maybe we'll get a NPC that will remove the 'Soulbound' for a fee so we can sell it, but I see that as fixing a problem that didn't exist. The materia system was broken on the RNG side, when spiritbonding gear and turning it into materia you had a small chance of getting the materia you want let alone the right Tier or a certain Grade. Because of the randomness it caused the fluctuation of certain 'usable' materia and along with Relic melds, they drove the economy the last few months of 1.0. The way I see it, people will still attempt melds, but most people will opt for the easier Dungeon Gear than blowing up gil trying to obtain multiple triple(triple probably being the new double with 'easier' melds) because the fact that we all expect upgrades and if they cannot sell their 'unusable' old gear to recoup loses, then why bother with it. In 1.0 people bought gear from crafters to blow up in melds and to spiritbind for materia, in 2.0 people will only be buying for spiritbinding and less likely to be blowing up multiples of items in melds.

Just my concerns.