[byr1001] Uncapping the Merit Point Categories

[MarkovChain]

I have a simple suggestion that would help the game, would not be difficult to implement, and would not cause any serious balance issues.

Remove all the merit point category caps.
Please let us hold more merits as well ; ;

(Category Caps are the limits on a group of merits. So the category cap for Tier 1 merits is 10. The category cap for Combat Skills is 30, etc.)


A. Will this cause balance issues?
No, because:
1) The strongest players pick one of their jobs and merit for it.
2) If they are perfectly merited for one job, it presents the biggest balance threat when given more merits because you have to assume that they would be on that job in situations that require high performance, the hardest events.
3) If they are perfectly merited for one job, any future merits that they obtain from having the cap increased will necessarily be less valuable to their job than the ones they already have.
4) Optimally-merited jobs barely benefit from increasing the caps.

Example:
Warrior is in some ways the greatest threat for this kind of adjustment because they are so versatile, so the limitation on combat skills/stats stands to benefit them the most. Still, what happens if you uncap a perfectly merited WAR?
- They gain 12 DEX and VIT.
- Their Warcry and Aggressor recasts drops 50 seconds.
- Instead of meriting three of Upheaval, Resolution, Ruinator, and Stardiver, now they can merit all four.
- They gain 14-15 accuracy (0-8% hit rate) with some of their proc weapons.

So you have barely made Warrior stronger. The other jobs benefit even less than this. Plus, at a time when people complain about the difficulty of events (like Legion, Provenance Watcher, etc.) this gives them an opportunity to help themselves. I mean, what do you want our failure rate to be on these events? Is it really too low at the moment?



B. Why should we do it?
1) This will give players nearly-unlimited potential for character growth. - It would take 6706 merits to cap out. Players currently have ~2000 or less. Even with an epeening "I get 250k/hr" Abyssea party, it would still take them almost 80 rl 24-hour days to cap out from 2000 merits.

2) A limiting merit system has always been the antithesis of the job system. - One of the major draws to FFXI is that the game lets you play through with only one character, which you are free to become attached to. There are certainly times when you need to change your role, and the job system accommodates that. It is silly to suddenly reverse this at the level cap, which is where players spend almost all of their time these days. When the cap was at level 75, you go 1 to 75 as a Red Mage playing however was convenient in any type of party, but Tier 2 merits forced you to decide whether you wanted to use your Red Mage to solo or do Salvage.

3) Programming-wise, this almost has to be possible and reasonable. - The category caps have been increased before several times. You could either remove them from the interface (clean) or increase them to the maximum amount (dirty but definitely possible).

4) At a time when content is sparse, this would give a much-needed boost to activity. - People want to play, but don't have anything that they can do to improve their character. This would make it so there is almost always something they can do.

5) Increased participation in events/systems that yield XP. - More people would do Grounds of Valor. More people would do Campaign. More people would do Besieged. More people would do Dominion Ops. More people would do Voidwatch. etc. If you increase the incentives, you increase the odds that people will partake in an event. Giving XP value serves as an incentive.





Fellow posters, I challenge you. Come up with a situation where the above proposed change would alter the way we do any event. Where it would make something noticeably easier. Where it would affect the "balance" of anything. Try!

This sounds retarded TBH. I know plenty of players waste their time leveling useless jobs to 99, but really. Let those players max their merit but please don't suggest the dev to let us waste our playtime doing "exp". We need something else than abyssea. If you want to make differences between players allow for a new kind of merit system farmed with upcoming content points. Legion wouldn't be fail if, for instance, the point would be used to upgrade stats. You know very well that abyssea is botted to hell, and people ("some people") would end up getting PL bots and let their char all day gathering the exp (if you allow for more meirt point cap). I mean it's time to evolve, merits are from the past. Some random thoughts :

food "upgrades" : granted x or y bonus when using food. For instance do a job trait so that when I play SMN, I'm getting pet accuracy when using a given food. The merits are earned by collecting exp in neo salvage.

party "upgrades" : grants various bonus (infinte possibilities) when teaming up with other : double attack, crit, TH ...


My point is, if you want to establish a new hierarchy between players you need to get aways from abyssea and exp spam. We've seen how it ended up with cruor farming. SE needs to put in place a system that prevents players from spamming without being as cock blocking as some events.

[Damane]

This sounds retarded TBH. I know plenty of players waste their time leveling useless jobs to 99, but really. Let those players max their merit but please don't suggest the dev to let us waste our playtime doing "exp". We need something else than abyssea. If you want to make differences between players allow for a new kind of merit system farmed with upcoming content points. Legion wouldn't be fail if, for instance, the point would be used to upgrade stats. You know very well that abyssea is botted to hell, and people ("some people") would end up getting PL bots and let their char all day gathering the exp (if you allow for more meirt point cap). I mean it's time to evolve, merits are from the past. Some random thoughts :

food "upgrades" : granted x or y bonus when using food. For instance do a job trait so that when I play SMN, I'm getting pet accuracy when using a given food. The merits are earned by collecting exp in neo salvage.

party "upgrades" : grants various bonus (infinte possibilities) when teaming up with other : double attack, crit, TH ...


My point is, if you want to establish a new hierarchy between players you need to get aways from abyssea and exp spam. We've seen how it ended up with cruor farming. SE needs to put in place a system that prevents players from spamming without being as cock blocking as some events.

seriously dont know what you are doing wrong, but I got all jobs to 99 (-DRG) and capped all merits while doing VW, some exp pts, and casual stuff. So yeah if I ever get DRG up to 99 (if I ever want) and get those merits capped by doing random shit like VW, dynamis, etc. what next? Sit on capped merits? I am throwing out merits on jobs atm I dont even play! because my main jobs merits have reached their limits!

[Yinnyth]

I like the idea of more diversity from one character to the next, not less. Couldn't they just fix merits so the ones that never get used are more appealing instead?

[Zagen]

I like the idea of more diversity from one character to the next, not less. Couldn't they just fix merits so the ones that never get used are more appealing instead?

Like give Bio 3 Defense Down instead of Attack Down? Because seriously for a lot of Tier 1 and 2 merits that's the kind of changes that would need to happen. There are a few exceptions but for the most part the useless merits need huge buffs and at that point they'd become the "more appealing" ones.

The game has far passed it's era of specializing in 1 job in a certain way, that ideal is a dead horse and SE has a bat.

[MarkovChain]

seriously dont know what you are doing wrong, but I got all jobs to 99 (-DRG) and capped all merits while doing VW, some exp pts, and casual stuff. So yeah if I ever get DRG up to 99 (if I ever want) and get those merits capped by doing random shit like VW, dynamis, etc. what next? Sit on capped merits? I am throwing out merits on jobs atm I dont even play! because my main jobs merits have reached their limits!

Ok bro so you are the kind of player to level all job, and all you can do is exp every job, we got it. The real players want event to make their main job progress (gear or new merits-type progression). Do I need to pull the chart of what job sucks and what job doesn't suck ? You leveled every job and don't use any lol, faceplam. Allowing my monk to caps its CHR wooot ? Since you guys like achieving useless things why don't you cap AF2+2 on every job ? I mean it's certainly better of an upgrade than the ability to cap your VIT. I think too many people have been used to the cokcblocking-less grind fest that was abyssea. EXP or MERIT no longer have value, that's why allowing for more merit wouldn't introduce character diversity.

[Demon6324236]

Any capped progression system will never really have diversity. If you choose 2 out of 4 abilities for a job then you will choose the 2 best, and leave the others. If you choose 3 of 14 WSs you will choose the 3 that benefit you as a player, not necessarily the jobs you like. I think any capped thing, especially between all jobs, would be bad just because then people would go more for efficiency than for actual preference, like many do now if they play unpopular jobs like PUP, RDM, or DRG, when it comes to WS merits.

[Kincard]

Funny thing about the WS Merits is that you're more likely to use it for jobs that arn't your favorite because you lack a good weapon for that job. EX: My favorite job is NIN, but there's no reason for me to get Shun because Blade: Hi will outdo it in just about every situation factoring in AM. It would be more beneficial if I used my limited WS slots to instead upgrade my other jobs which I didn't bother spending an absurd amount of time 99-ing a REM weapon for.

Granted, I have Shun merited anyway because I'm NIN-crazy, but that's beside the point.

[Mirage]

Any capped progression system will never really have diversity. If you choose 2 out of 4 abilities for a job then you will choose the 2 best, and leave the others. If you choose 3 of 14 WSs you will choose the 3 that benefit you as a player, not necessarily the jobs you like. I think any capped thing, especially between all jobs, would be bad just because then people would go more for efficiency than for actual preference, like many do now if they play unpopular jobs like PUP, RDM, or DRG, when it comes to WS merits.

Any uncapped progression system will never really have diversity either, in the end.

Anyway, it is possible to have diversity in a capped system if the different abilities you have to choose between are actually powerful for entirely different reasons. If you have 5 merits and every single one of them is directly related to increasing your damage output, the choice isn't really a choice, but a calculation.

If you have some merits that increase damage output, and others that increase an entirely different aspect of your job than damage dealing, and you had to choose between this and additional damage dealing, then it comes down to actual choice based on what you want to do with your job.

I think the biggest issue with the current merits is simply that so many of them are really poorly thought through, and underpowered compared to other merits in the current state of the game. That's why there is so little diversity.

That being said, I'm definitely not against a very huge increase in the total amount of spendable merit points, I just don't think completely uncapping everything is necessary, and that it would just lead to a more boring game. I'd rather merits were actual choices, which requires SE to actually rebalance a lot of them.

[Taint2]

Ok bro so you are the kind of player to level all job, and all you can do is exp every job, we got it. The real players want event to make their main job progress (gear or new merits-type progression). Do I need to pull the chart of what job sucks and what job doesn't suck ? You leveled every job and don't use any lol, faceplam. Allowing my monk to caps its CHR wooot ? Since you guys like achieving useless things why don't you cap AF2+2 on every job ? I mean it's certainly better of an upgrade than the ability to cap your VIT. I think too many people have been used to the cokcblocking-less grind fest that was abyssea. EXP or MERIT no longer have value, that's why allowing for more merit wouldn't introduce character diversity.

The problem is the limitations. I play 5 DDs jobs: MNK,WAR,DRK,SAM,RNG all have their uses in endgame but I'm extremely limited in what I can merit. SAM has to have Shoha, WAR/DRK have to Resolution, MNK has to have H2H merits. Now I'm stuck filling in the rest or stuck gimping a job.

As players like myself get more and more capped on everything we have almost nothing left to work for.
I would finish Spharai tomorrow but I have zero merits left for SS which would gimp the weapon. Same goes for Mandau, Anni and Excal. All of which you need their merited WSs or you are gimping them.

[Kincard]

I'm not sure I understand what MarkovChain's objection to the OP is given that he actually agrees with him. He says that uncapping merits is pointless because it will barely affect players based on the fact that capping VIT or CHR is worthless...which is exactly what the OP's point is, that removing the caps affects nothing enough to warrant the existing limitations in the first place. It's adding something for players to do with their merits instead of just sitting on them all the time, and it can add some stuff for players to do in their offtime when they're not running events with their linkshells or whatever.

The great thing is what he suggests as an alternative. Instead of grinding xp in Abyssea, why not grind xp in Neo Salvage instead! That'll really show how amazing of a player you are, killing massive amounts of fodder monsters in one entry limited area instead of killing massive amounts of fodder monsters in one entry limited area.