Request: Increase Merit "Weapon Skill" Cap from 15, to 25.

[Karbuncle]

Hi Everyone!

As the title says, The point of this particular thread is to request an increase in the Amount of Weaponskills we can merit. Currently, We can merit a total of 15x in the (3 WS to Max).

My request is to increase this to 25, Which would allow us a maximum of 5 Max Merited WS, Just 1/3rd of the Total of them.

I ask this because it would be a small comprimise, i know SE Wants us to chose these WS for whatever reason, But i feel 3/15 (1/5th) is just too a few too small. 5/15 (A total of 1/3rd of them) would be more reasonable and still include the feeling of exclusiveness with the weaponskills.

I ask this because while some people know exactly what they want, like Resolution, Ruinator, Exenterator, Last Stand, Tachi-Shoha being obvious choices, the more "Fun" WS, like Realmrazer, or Shattersoul are left unmeritted in lieu of more powerful choices.

I personally wanted to merit Shattersoul for fun, But instead went the path of Use over fun.

I know the choice is suppose to be there for us to decide, But as stated, This would be a small adjustment in the right direction, Keep them exclusive as it appears to fall in line with your vision, but allow us a bit more lead-way, a bit more freedom to map out a proper balance of use and fun.

Thanks for your consideration!

[Kristal]

"Fun" choices will always fall outside the spending budget,wether it's 15 or 25. 15 was enough for me, with just H2H, dagger and sword.

Still, I wouldn't be surprised if SE increases the limit in a future update, after they got some more data on player preference on weaponskills.

[Karbuncle]

"Fun" choices will always fall outside the spending budget,wether it's 15 or 25. 15 was enough for me, with just H2H, dagger and sword.

Still, I wouldn't be surprised if SE increases the limit in a future update, after they got some more data on player preference on weaponskills.

Not always, No. Maybe to some, Yah. For instance, As it stands now I have Dagger, Greatsword, and Axe. If i got 2 more, It'd be GreatAxe(orH2H), and staff!

I really do hope they decide to up it in the future...

[Nightfox]

Hi Everyone!

As the title says, The point of this particular thread is to request an increase in the Amount of Weaponskills we can merit. Currently, We can merit a total of 15x in the (3 WS to Max).

My request is to increase this to 25, Which would allow us a maximum of 5 Max Merited WS, Just 1/3rd of the Total of them.

I ask this because it would be a small comprimise, i know SE Wants us to chose these WS for whatever reason, But i feel 3/15 (1/5th) is just too a few too small. 5/15 (A total of 1/3rd of them) would be more reasonable and still include the feeling of exclusiveness with the weaponskills.

I ask this because while some people know exactly what they want, like Resolution, Ruinator, Exenterator, Last Stand, Tachi-Shoha being obvious choices, the more "Fun" WS, like Realmrazer, or Shattersoul are left unmeritted in lieu of more powerful choices.

I personally wanted to merit Shattersoul for fun, But instead went the path of Use over fun.

I know the choice is suppose to be there for us to decide, But as stated, This would be a small adjustment in the right direction, Keep them exclusive as it appears to fall in line with your vision, but allow us a bit more lead-way, a bit more freedom to map out a proper balance of use and fun.

Thanks for your consideration!

I agree with you on this Karbuncle. At first I was disappointed that there was a limit to how many that can be merited. But, I realized that it would not be special at all if anyone can own all weapon skills 5/5. However, as you stated, only a max of 15 is not that much, in our opinions at least. I have all jobs at level 99 and would like a few of them to get some of the new weapon skills, but with only 3 to max out, it is a difficult choice. Though I've heard that in ffxi you are only sopposed to focus mainly on 3 jobs, which could be their reasoning. But overall, I believe a max of 25 is fair.

[Hayward]

I'd sooner want the quality of certain weapon skills improved--hello Requiescat, Realmrazer, Ruinator--than have the chance to burn more merit points on them as is. It is long past time to stop penalizing weapon skills because of the job associated with them (don't bother lying about Requiescat and Paladin, by the way).

[Daniel_Hatcher]

I'd rather they increased the job specific merits limit, especially now it's not based on making your job as unique to you as you need most for triggers in VW.

[Karbuncle]

I'd sooner want the quality of certain weapon skills improved--hello Requiescat, Realmrazer, Ruinator--than have the chance to burn more merit points on them as is. It is long past time to stop penalizing weapon skills because of the job associated with them (don't bother lying about Requiescat and Paladin, by the way).

Ruinator is actually really Boss. It destroys rampage in every aspect, It is the best Axe Weaponskill in the game. (outside Abyssea of course).

Still, I think You're right in some aspects. I always thought it was really really Really REALLY Stupid of Square Enix to make level 96+ Merited Weaponskills "balance" with level 60 Weaponskills (Hello Realmrazer Nerf to be about on par with Hexastrike...).

The logic of that descision escapes me.

DevA:"So, We have these Final, Powerful, Merited Weaponskills, How strong should we make them?"
DevB:"How about we make them On Par or weaker than the weaponskills they got naturally over 30 levels ago for Balance?"
Everyone:"GIVE THIS MAN A PROMOTION."

[mattkoko]

honestly, i think merit point ws are a dumb idea in general. this is obviously just my opinion, but the whole merit grind is getting extremely boring. we need merit points for everything, merit points for regular merits, merit points for quests (level cap quests to be exact), merit points for relic armor upgrades and merit points for weapon skills and lets not forget, merit points to even make those ws an option to obtain. its starting to get old really really fast. creativity is starting to really lack. it almost seems like they sit around a table trying to come up with ideas and find that nothing works so they settle for "lets just make it cost merit points." again, this is just my opinion but merit weapon skills is not the best idea in my opinion. especially considering that you need them in 5/5 for most of them to be useful at all. and some of them are useless even at 5/5 with their level 60-65 weapon skills out damaging them. at least if they are going to have us spend 100 merits on a ws that also requires a skill level of 357, it should be better then our ws that you gain with only 200-225 points alone. i think it would be much better just to make it an actual quest. not to tough but not to easy. and the end result, make it something rewarding and actually worth having. now if they made it an actual quest to unlock the weapon skills and then made it so you can spend merit points to tweak them a little, then that would make much more sense to me. again, only tweak, like give a list of additional effects we may want to merit on the ws. let us tweak the modifiers of the ws so we can choose which ones we want on it. example, if it is sword, give us the option to choose whether we want str, mnd, or int as primary modifiers. but this having to make a ws 5/5 in merits to even make it worth having is just plain dumb in my opinion

[Nightfox]

honestly, i think merit point ws are a dumb idea in general. this is obviously just my opinion, but the whole merit grind is getting extremely boring. we need merit points for everything, merit points for regular merits, merit points for quests (level cap quests to be exact), merit points for relic armor upgrades and merit points for weapon skills and lets not forget, merit points to even make those ws an option to obtain. its starting to get old really really fast. creativity is starting to really lack. it almost seems like they sit around a table trying to come up with ideas and find that nothing works so they settle for "lets just make it cost merit points." again, this is just my opinion but merit weapon skills is not the best idea in my opinion. especially considering that you need them in 5/5 for most of them to be useful at all. and some of them are useless even at 5/5 with their level 60-65 weapon skills out damaging them. at least if they are going to have us spend 100 merits on a ws that also requires a skill level of 357, it should be better then our ws that you gain with only 200-225 points alone. i think it would be much better just to make it an actual quest. not to tough but not to easy. and the end result, make it something rewarding and actually worth having. now if they made it an actual quest to unlock the weapon skills and then made it so you can spend merit points to tweak them a little, then that would make much more sense to me. again, only tweak, like give a list of additional effects we may want to merit on the ws. let us tweak the modifiers of the ws so we can choose which ones we want on it. example, if it is sword, give us the option to choose whether we want str, mnd, or int as primary modifiers. but this having to make a ws 5/5 in merits to even make it worth having is just plain dumb in my opinion

I know what you mean mattkoko, it can get really tedious and/or boring to acquire merit points for alot of things. But, I feel with more merit options, the more people will need to party for experience points. If there were less options to spend merits on, there would be less need to party (unless to level up a job). In my opinion, I would like them to continue making new things to spend merits on so they will not go to waste. Not everyone likes to party though because it too is boring at times.

[mattkoko]

i agree. but if that is the case, i would rather them make more meritable abilites or traits, rather then quests and armor. again, i am not saying completely band meritable ws. all i am saying is make every ws attainable by a quest (one that does not involve spending merits. however make it like the wsnm quests or drops from certain nms in or outside abyssea). and then once you have this weapons skills, allow you to merit little tweaks on the ws. rather then make it completely reliant on 5/5 merits for the ws to be useful

[Nightfox]

i agree. but if that is the case, i would rather them make more meritable abilites or traits, rather then quests and armor. again, i am not saying completely band meritable ws. all i am saying is make every ws attainable by a quest (one that does not involve spending merits. however make it like the wsnm quests or drops from certain nms in or outside abyssea). and then once you have this weapons skills, allow you to merit little tweaks on the ws. rather then make it completely reliant on 5/5 merits for the ws to be useful

That is a very good point Mattkoko. I wouldn't mind the initial tier of the new weapon skills to be unlocked via a quest, as long as it isn't a huge hassle. Both getting weapon skill points and possibly fighting an NM that can't be solo'd for a fragment of a WS seems tedious in my opinion. Maybe even something along the lines of a single Magian Trial, such as acquiring a special weapon from the "Splitery Chest" to use and completing a "Use this weapon skill 300 times" trial, With the respective weapon equipped of course, similar to the mythic weapons skills.

[Cursed]

SE Dev team brainstorming process:

Bob "I just noticed, we introduced Lv.99 cap but we haven't allowed HP/MP to scale."
Bill "and we kind dropped the ball on weapon skills and magic spells too"
Bob "Yeah RDM kinda useless now. we need to do something about all this"
Bill "Lets talk to the others and see what we come up with"

Hours later
Bob "So we're introducing 3 new tiers of ws's. 1 for normal weapons, 1 for relic holders, and 1 for mythic holders"
Bill "cool. we're giving RDM hastega, Slowga, Stop, Demi, Paralyga and Refreshga"
Bob "awesome!. We're gonna bring HP and MP up to be roughly 25% greater than it currently is at the moment at 99"
Bill "excellent! We fixed PLD and tanking!"
Bob "cool what did the boss say?"

He said "nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu! BARANCE!"
Bob "......."
Bill ".............................."

[Zhronne]

Thread approved by Zhronne!

[Ophannus]

Actually, the JP Community Dev Team was talking about this on the JP forums about 2 months ago. I think the reasoning behind the current cap is two fold.

1) "If they increase it from 15 to 25, people will then probably ask to increase the cap further from 25 to 30 or even to 35, where do we draw the line?"

2) The reasoning behind only being able to cap 3 is to promote specialties/customization. If everyone had many of the weapon skills unlocked there would be less diversity between players and it would become 'the norm' rather than one player 'specializing in 1-3 jobs' merit ws' with the current system, players choose their favorite or most useful weapon skills. If they wanted everybody to have all of them they wouldn't have made them meritable and they'd be unlocked naturally through skill points, which isn't the point of merits. Merit point abilities are meant to further specialize your jobs to cater to your playstyle, not make you bread&butter like everything else. i.e You can be an OAT DRG and spam Stardiver and thus max out Stardiver, or you can have Mythic and use Drakesbane and thus put the points from Stardiver into say your DRK's Resolution. Or maybe since you have Almace you don't need Requiescat, or maybe you prefer using Excalibur and KoTR so you save your points for another job's WS etc..

[scaevola]

You can be an OAT DRG and spam Stardiver and thus max out Stardiver, or you can have Mythic and use Drakesbane and thus put the points from Stardiver into say your DRK's Resolution. Or maybe since you have Almace you don't need Requiescat, or maybe you prefer using Excalibur and KoTR so you save your points for another job's WS etc..

This is fine and good in theory but falls apart pretty quickly in practice, especially when you're talking about merit WSes that are actually stronger than emp/relic alternatives, like Shoha, Ruinator, Resolution, situationally Exenterator, and so forth. Is somebody who, for instance, wants to invest enough into her SAM to make a Masamune really going to NOT take Shoha when having it is clearly a damage upgrade for that SAM, even with Masamune?

I mean, considering how many DRKs out there leapt at the chance to bleed themselves dry rushing Ragnaroks just to exclusively use Resolution, balancing merit WS access with the idea that somebody would use a weaker WS on their main jobs just to save points for something else seems awfully naive.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Er, that makes no bloody sense because even with Almace Requiescat has uses, even with Ryu stardiver still has some use (although obviously it isn't the main weaponskill to use), certain weaponskills such as ruinator/shattersoul/resolution are clearly superiour in many situations for the weapon type...

And KoTR is bad and you should feel bad for mentioning it. Requiescat is typically better with Excalibur.

[Karbuncle]

If what Ophannus said is true, and one of their reasons is that actually listening to player feedback might cause a catastrophic domino effect of them being forced to consider other player feedback, This forum is a GD farce and its insulting to even pretend they care.

Where do they draw the line? Hmm, I don't know, Where the F**K they want?. They can come in and say "We've decided to upgrade to 5, But that will be the final adjustment, We draw the line at 1/3rd", Sure, there will always be someone that asks for more, But the majority would be satisfied. Holding off an update simply because they fear of people asking for more...? I just am so upset by how childish and unprofessional something like that sounds... I can't even form a clear response.

I mean, If they came in and said "We're keeping it at 3 because we've decided this is for the best for our vision", I'd say "Well at least their being honest, and lets get serious, the last time we got something designed to be fun was probably early 2004, and everything since then has had to meet the criteria:

*Bottle-necking
*Time-Sink
*Ridiculous Drop rate to strengthen the above
*At least 2 Instances of R.N.G
*Lowest possible Reward/Effort Ratio to ensure Long Event life"

Or something equally cheeky, But I'd accept the fact their reason is basically "We've Decided on 3, For the sake of Balance"... I just can't accept the idea they'd hold off an update simply based on the assumption we might ask for more... I mean... People will always ask for more, Even if you draw the line at 3, People will continue to ask for more. Its human Nature to want more.

If they don't know this, who raised them? Its like they're saying "Hopefully if we ignore you long enough, You'll stop asking us for help and we can close these forums, Since _____ found out about them and he doesn't like it". I feel like after ruining FFXIV, Whoever came here to take out his frustration on us for being demoted off the team for a younger man who's making the game 100x Better.

Well, T his rant got a little off track didn't it?

[Trisscar]

And yet nothing you said was inherently wrong, Karby. They have Atmos, the test server where they have play testers that they are obstinately listening to, and Atmos has been open to normal players longer than logwatch has been around. I can't imagine logwatch initially gotten many positive responses (especially from the blu contingent), so it's more proof that Squaresuck doesn't listen to anyone else and does whatever the hell they want to.

Back on topic: Rather than seeing more merits able to be spent on weapon skills I'd rather them give the weapon skills more bite. The one weapon skill I use the most is Requ, which in my mind only exists to chain with Bloodrake, and even then I already have other weapon skill to chain darkness with.

But yeah, these are weapon skills. That you get at level 99. That you spend merits on. And they don't overshadow weapon skills you get without even questing them at level 60? What the fudge Squaresuck?

[Alhanelem]

This falls in the range of what I'd consider acceptable.



I personally wanted to merit Shattersoul for fun, But instead went the path of Use over fun. shattersoul is pretty damn good and I don't regret meriting it for one second.

[Juilan]

If what Ophannus said is true, and one of their reasons is that actually listening to player feedback might cause a catastrophic domino effect of them being forced to consider other player feedback, This forum is a GD farce and its insulting to even pretend they care.

With this as justification, can we elect members of the forums as devs and give them the same total pay as the 3 north korean rice farmers they outsourced to? I will work for rice!

karb you have an ever enlightened vision for how nice things could be... id like to balance takana with some ancient greek philosophy, though i dont think he'd listen. Or maybe balance him with some of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's logic

[Nala]

Personally i'd like to balance him on a flaming tight rope suspended over various vicious (normally) caged beasts, with a killer bee hive attached to one end of his balance stick and on the other side a monkey flinging poo at him.

[Alhanelem]

Personally i'd like to balance him on a flaming tight rope suspended over various vicious (normally) caged beasts, with a killer bee hive attached to one end of his balance stick and on the other side a monkey flinging poo at him.
That might be just a BIT extreme.

[Vazerus]

OP has my support, and it looks like 64 others, too xD

[Kristal]

The Art of Balance, by Sun Tzunaka.

[Karbuncle]

Hello Square Enix. Just thought I might bring this back up again since the content seems to be getting light due to work on the Expansion... Maybe throw this in an update and shut everyone up while they squee for glee and merit their fun Weaponskills?

P.S if you tell us "No, Because if we raise it to 5 you'll ask for more" - I'm booking my ticket to the next vana'fest so I can convince every player there to ask the Dev team to raise the Merit point limit on WS.

[saevel]

Camate / Oki and other CR's can you please bring this up to the devs. There is a large amount of support from the player base on this issue and it won't effect "game balance" in any way.

[Demon6324236]

Camate / Oki and other CR's can you please bring this up to the devs. There is a large amount of support from the player base on this issue and it won't effect "game balance" in any way.

I already predict a responce much like this one...
Good evening, Vana'diel!

As a part of the character growth system, we will be increasing merit caps and adding new categories in the future. However, we will not be removing the cap entirely.

The reason we are not removing this cap is because it would allow players to ultimately max out everything and cause characters to become universal or too versatile.
The whole idea behind merit points is to offer many choices and allow players to choose based on their preferences. This way, even though it’s the same job amongst everyone, their proficiencies and roles are different. With that said, by totally removing the cap from merit points, the fundamental purpose would be lost.Nothing to do with balance, they just don't want to let everyone do alot, you pick and choose the best things and the rest are a waste of time.

[Karbuncle]

I'm fine with a "Pick and Chose" Scenario, But 3 is too limiting. 5 Seems like a Balanced number. 3 Is just an insultingly low amount.

I can get every single WS in the game, Relic, Mythic, Empyrean, etc if i work hard enough... So i don't understand the logic behind making a new set of WS completely unobtainable at max power to the playerbase (I.E they're functionally worthless withput 5 Merits)... But I get that they want them unique.

I just 3 Is too unique, and 5 would be a great compromising middle ground both players and Devs should be able to enjoy.

[Luvbunny]

Need to be able to pick 5 not 3. Even 4 would be an absolute minimum at best, 3 are just overtly stingy!!

[Eric]

Why does SE have a problem with letting people spend time gaining the 2,000,000 extra limit points that would be necessary to fully merit two additional weapon skills? It doesn't make sense.

[CapriciousOne]

Actually, the JP Community Dev Team was talking about this on the JP forums about 2 months ago. I think the reasoning behind the current cap is two fold.

1) "If they increase it from 15 to 25, people will then probably ask to increase the cap further from 25 to 30 or even to 35, where do we draw the line?"

2) The reasoning behind only being able to cap 3 is to promote specialties/customization. If everyone had many of the weapon skills unlocked there would be less diversity between players and it would become 'the norm' rather than one player 'specializing in 1-3 jobs' merit ws' with the current system, players choose their favorite or most useful weapon skills. If they wanted everybody to have all of them they wouldn't have made them meritable and they'd be unlocked naturally through skill points, which isn't the point of merits. Merit point abilities are meant to further specialize your jobs to cater to your playstyle, not make you bread&butter like everything else. i.e You can be an OAT DRG and spam Stardiver and thus max out Stardiver, or you can have Mythic and use Drakesbane and thus put the points from Stardiver into say your DRK's Resolution. Or maybe since you have Almace you don't need Requiescat, or maybe you prefer using Excalibur and KoTR so you save your points for another job's WS etc..

1. Well personally I think the limit cap itself is just dumb period, weather its weapon skills, attributes, job abilities, or whatever. The fact is even if you COULD merit each option in each category not everybody values the same things. For instance, under attributes mages would favor int/mnd mostly and maybe chr if you're dancer. non mage mobs would favor agi/vit defensively or for damage dealers str and dex would be more priorities. Essentially people would either merit up what they feel would benefit the jobs they play the most or sure up the weaknesses of the jobs they play the most. Personally like Group 1 and group 2 merits for each job should be 25 each or at least 15 as an absolute minimum but I dont expect much of SE these days. For my Red Mage i mostly would like to max out Phalanx II, Dia+Bio III, paralyze+blind II as I see these as most useful to my play style but that is just me. As far as drawing the line, I'm not saying everybody idea should just be heard and thrown into the game but at the very least if somebody post and idea and enough people "like" the post using the like button then it should at least be SERIOUSLY considered and not just glossed over.

2. As far as weaponskills go i am only 95 and havent done the final limit break yet and with the cost each merit for those I am in no hurry to get and merit any of them as I'm already tired of the grind for merits as well as magian trials. In any case my focus would be on Extenerator for daggers (THF/DNC) and Requiescat (BLU/PLD/RDM) as those are the jobs I am most likely to consitently play and can each use those ws with the weapon type they are assigned. It is when you come into the more specialized weapons like katana/great katana that very few jobs can use where that becomes a real issue. Even in the case of where i would decide to use and level up BLM/WHM/SCH making the decision of club or staff still is dicey at best bc each weapon has other weapon skills that are both useful depending on the situation as well as stat bonuses. I would have to pick one over the other instead of being able to max out both and just switching weapons as needed for the active job. The key word is OPTIONS, se isnt in the business of letting us have access to as many OPTIONS as possible at any and all given moments.

[Crimson_Slasher]

More support for this. In my book some jobs can do without merit ws and make emp/relic/mythic weapons/ws. But some seem to conclusively need the merit ws just to be competative. Id say 4-5 fully merited ws would be great and while i may sound like a broken record... I really cant give up other ws i currently have to get shoha, and from what im seeing, id be lucky to keep up with fudo only.

[Mayoyama]

Didnt see this thread when I started the below one lol:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/27310-Please-increase-number-of-meritable-weaponskills!?p=361666#post361666

Oops xD

[scaevola]

Wouldn't mind seeing the forum flooded with unique threads asking for this tbh.

[Nala]

Yeah they've proven they can ignore long running threads with tons of likes for months, almost seems more effective to barrage them with quantity of threads asking for similar adjustments...

[Powder]

There are many of us who play more than 3 jobs these days depending on what we are doing. Come on SE let us merit more WS! How many players have to beg before you give us what we want? I will jump off the cliff and say hell let us merit them all. Pleeeeeze?

[Olor]

yes please, still want. know this is a necro thread but still want this.