Am I the only one that feels like the current way to convert gear into materia promotes running instance undergeared? At the moment the easiest way to get gear to convert is to craft it, or get it from dungeons like Stone Sigil. Then to convert it you have to spirit bond it by wearing it and a dungeon is the fastest way to do it. People want tombs, so they wear there level 41 bracer, 42 rings, 41 neck, etc into something like Amdpar Keep or Wandering Palace....

I think this game should have a de-synthesis class that works like mining, but instead of minerals you recover materials from a piece of gear. So you would switch to the Desynthesis class, press N, put a piece of gear in the window then click on it and you'd get a window like the mining window.

Unknown: ??? (33%)
Bronze Ingot: (66%)
etc

The unknown's being how you find materia. With certain types of items yielding certain types of Materia and the level of the item determining if its I, II, or III tier materia.

Also certain items might allow getting multiple mats back, low grade items you get back an item and it's destroyed, nothing more to get out of it.