[byr1001] Uncapping the Merit Point Categories

[MarkovChain]

Correct that would be awesome. If you want to make a difference between a good a gimp player you need to put barriers wether it is party size limitations, gil, or periodical duration. Otherwise you end up with abyssea exp-bot that are spamming LJ and at the end of the day everyone get the same things. I mean during abyssea rage you didn't see any job without their full AF3+2, didn't you ?

[Kincard]

If the boons of uncapped merits are as insignificant as you say, then it shouldn't matter to you if they do it because they're barely gaining anything out of it other than something to actually do in-game, and even from your perspective it's not like it would be taking away from your Afterglow accomplishments like AF3+2 did to a bunch of 75 gear. The point of the suggestion is that it's something easily done with almost no work on the part of the devs. I'm sure everyone would love a new merit system but that's not really point of the suggestion being made.

[Taint2]

It would stimulate the game some as well.

Sure some people will be mage botting their XP but others will actually have something to do. As it sits right now most people are sitting on 30/30 merits with nowhere to place them.

And MarkovChain has said most of the merits do next to nothing, but atleast the system woudl still be used.

[MarkovChain]

I don't want the game to be transformed into "spend 100 hours for 0.1% performance increase". Being "farm for 1% better performance" is already annoying enough ty. Like I said if you are bored you can always farm full AF2+2, but wait you actually need to do something for this unlike abyssea leeching/botting haha.

[Nala]

They atleast need to loosen up the restrictions.

3 WSs is terrible, 5 should be the min with 7-8 being preferred. As said a few times certain WSs are MUST HAVES for their jobs which limits the entire system.

The other categories that need some flexibility are Combat and Magic, just open it up so we aren't pinned down to just a couple weapons/magic types.

Why should these have been merited at all in the first place? why couldn't we just quest them like in the past? why couldn't the quests just require you to have merit points in addition to x item or objective instead.

Hell they want to add in time waisters, why dont they still make it so you have to do 5 quests that are long and involved to make these ws's fully upgraded?

And yes the merit system might as well not exist anyways there isnt enough diversity for most jobs/categories to really limit skill choices down. If the merit system were robust enough where your choices in them made the difference of a perle set war vs full endgame appropriate gear then yeah i'd be with the whole limits, as it stands though the merit system is not that critical to job performance in that there are no real choices as stated before, a war isnt going to merit aggressive aim, or int agi or vit.

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.

Here's an idea for all the snow flakes: capped mogslip storage capacity, each slip can only hold up to 5 full sets, must be of the same kind that way you have to pick and choose which 5 jobs you want to have empy gear, oh oh and then we can cap exp totals so that you can only level 3 jobs to 99 and the rest to 50 so you have to choose which 3 jobs you want to be max level that way every one is extra special. (only quoted you because i got the idea while reading your post)

[Yinnyth]

Here's an idea for all the snow flakes: capped mogslip storage capacity, each slip can only hold up to 5 full sets, must be of the same kind that way you have to pick and choose which 5 jobs you want to have empy gear, oh oh and then we can cap exp totals so that you can only level 3 jobs to 99 and the rest to 50 so you have to choose which 3 jobs you want to be max level that way every one is extra special.

Here's an idea for all the communists: remove all the jobs from the game. Everyone would become a mime instead. Mimes would have access to all the job traits, abilities, spells, HP, MP, attributes, skills, equipment, and merits, but you have to grind exp for 7 years to get all of it.

Yes, I know I'm glazing over the actual idea of what the OP is trying to accomplish by taking it to the extreme, and that's not how a person should look at the original suggestion. The original suggestion has been well thought out, and many people agree with the points raised. To a certain extent, I also agree. However, I would still rather have the merit system fixed and made into what it's supposed to be instead of watch it become a simple extension of leveling. I also believe it would affect game balance and job balance substantially more than its supporters believe.

[Nala]

Unless they added the ability to merit things that made substantial boosts to character performance no it would not.

Merits like Increase WS dmg x% would be in the same category as Elemental magic damage x% so you'd have to choose or something actually potent, as it stands with the merit system job specific there are only a handful of abilities you actually merit, if you merit anything beyond the ones that give the most benefit chances are you do not actually play nor care for that job.

The only other thing is base stats, of which the main benefit is not having to choose between STR DEX and INT, as VIT and CHR do little to make them more worthwhile merits over the other base stats. That said some of the best peices of gear in the game give up to +15 or more to a single or even several base stats at a time meaning capped stat merits are barely the equivalent of 1 peice of gear.

[Yinnyth]

The only other thing is base stats, of which the main benefit is not having to choose between STR DEX and INT, as VIT and CHR do little to make them more worthwhile merits over the other base stats. That said some of the best peices of gear in the game give up to +15 or more to a single or even several base stats at a time meaning capped stat merits are barely the equivalent of 1 peice of gear.

Those are a perfect example of how the merit system fails to live up to what it's supposed to be. If I want to be a good BLM, I need INT merits, and possibly MND merits if I ever use white magic debuffs. But then I'm screwed if I want to be a good SAM also.

My opinion is that merits should not force you to choose between which jobs you want to be good at. Instead, they should force you to choose what you want each job to be good at. If I had my way, you'd put merits into the attribute pool, then every job gets to choose its own attributes from that pool to be boosted. So I could choose CHR and VIT for my BRD, and DEX and AGI for my THF. Furthermore, I'd add secondary bonuses to each attribute to make the choice of attributes harder.

[Vagrua]

Limitations are annoying to progress.

[Demon6324236]

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

I know it wouldn't be, but then again thats kinda the point. I would rather no cap, which allows for no diversity via merits, rather than forced cap in the name of fake diversity which we currently have where everyone basically chooses the same ones anyways.

Basically, we know that right now the diversity thing doesn't really work, keeping the cap for diversity is kinda stupid, but if you remove it, you are only removing the cap, not gaining or removing diversity really & you give people more to do in the game as well as making xp parties more worth doing for players. If you look at places like Worm parties they are dying down, or at least on Phoenix it seems they are, they often run on only 6~12 people, making it harder for newer players to catch up, so doing this would mean players need xp again, people would go back to Abyssea, GoV, and other ways of leveling, making it easier for everyone to level because of it.