Merit Weapon Skill Adjustments April Update

I didn't say remove "All the games limits", I said, and I'll quote:

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Honestly, If they want a bit more longevity, they should just uncap merits entirely, but I'm sure they're saving that for the games Swan Song update.

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Meaning, If they Uncapped Merit Categories, It would give people a lot to work on, I mean, Some would probably finish it in a day or two but they haven't seen the sun in about 4 and a half years and look like Tom Hanks at the end of the Movie where he's stranded on a Desert Island.

It wouldn't break the game in literally any way. The only thing the limits currently do is make us chose which jobs to max toward... Job Specific Merits have never been too broken that their limits stop the game from collapsing and having a Single PUP Solo Provenance or a SMN Soloing AV... They aren't broken and its nothing like a "Cheat" mode.

Plainly put, No combination of Merits, Individually or together, are so broken that they need limits on them, SE Was just trying to create diversity in Endgame by having choices and limits, which was an admirable ideal, I'm just saying if they removed the cap very few would complain and would give people a lot of new merits they need to build up and make all that Exp we're getting from Reives and Coalition Assignments mean something other than what they are now... "Change jobs > Turn in > Change back"

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makes players who have played the game longer all the more better than people who haven't played as long

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Isn't this generally how games work ? ?

That aside, I don't see how removing the cap and allowing people who want to cap everything to do it negatively affects players who are fine with having 3 capped weapon skills.


They won't uncap it though which is why I think they should just raise the cap to the point where the probability of people being annoyed by it is low.

They want to be unique snowflakes and without that uniqueness they feel cheated. Honestly, going to quote Star Trek...

"A Diamond is still a Diamond even if its just one of many, it still shines as bright".

Rather we have to chose, or can all possess the best, Doesn't matter, We're all still awesome. Some more awesome than others. Like me. :3

Edit: NO offense to Snowflakes, I love winter

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That aside, I don't see how removing the cap and allowing people who want to cap everything to do it negatively affects players who are fine with having 3 capped weapon skills.

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Nobody wants to have less. More is always better! Do you think anyone would purposely stay at 3 capped WS if they could raise more?

As I said, part of the point is to give the player decisions to make. Ever heard the expression, "Can't have your cake and eat it too?"

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Isn't this generally how games work ? ?

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As I said, uncapping the merits takes what is normally a minor, unavoidable issue and makes it worse. Old content is made easier over time to allow newer players to catch up to minimize this, though of course you can't make it go away completely without a time machine. Why take an inevitable problem and do something that makes it worse?

Many games make you choose between having this and having that. I don't know why everyone in this game thinks that's so horrible.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

They want to be unique snowflakes and without that uniqueness they feel cheated. Honestly, going to quote Star Trek...

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So, you hate customization. Okay, well why don't you just say so? less beating around the bush. This isn't like making stupid people feel special. Why do you act like uniqueness is some kind of bad thing that people shouldn't want?

In most games to be the best at one thing, you have to give up being the best at something else. But in this game, everyone wants to be able to be the best at everything. Why am i the only one that sees this as a problem?

Because FFXI is the one MMO that breaks that stupid "ONE ONRY" Stigma all MMOs posses, ONE JOB, ONE CHARACTER, FINAL DESTINATION, is boring. I don't hate Customization, I hate Limits. Limits are just artificial walls. Customizing is exactly what I want in this game, and no, Limiting my Ability to Customize isn't so how a Customization itself.

FFXI has a job system you can switch between at any time for a reason. merits contradict the logic to allowing free access to all jobs all the time. If use my Personality and playstyle to be unique in FFXI, I don't need Merits for that. Do you? Cause i feel plenty unique without the need to know I somehow have Merits to back up my lack of other qualifying features.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Uncapping merits wouldn't provide longevity, it would help kill the game faster.

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Fast and easy way to say why you are wrong, I would need more merits to cap them all, and most of them are worthless anyways which is why we do not pick certain ones. Let me give an example, WAR, Aggressive Aim, normally I would look at this merit a single time, and never again because it is absolute trash. Now, if I could 5/5 all merits on WAR, I would 5/5 this, why? Because I can, simple enough, not hard, just something more to do, and I like knowing I have capped all merits. Now lets say they removed all of the current limits, you would more than double the amount of merits people would need to cap everything. Every job would have 2~3 times as many merit points needed to finish them because you could cap all 4~6 options rather than simply 2. Merit WSs would provide many more, currently we can have 3/14, thats a total of 100 merits per completed WS, so doing the math, we would have 1100 more merits to get simply because of WSs alone. All in all, more work, now how many of these are overpowered? None, because most merits are not used as it is, there are only a few jobs that have actual hard choices.

Basically, we would spend more time meriting, and gain little from it that would really speed other things up, if anything it would make playing a larger variety of jobs more enjoyable, and by doing so, making you take even longer because you are opened up to more jobs. It could not really make the game go shorter, it would not make things easier, it would eliminate the false ideal of unique merits that exists, thats about it, when if you look at the census info anyways you see that most people seem to pick the same merits anyways. So unless you can explain exactly how and why it would make the game shorter, and would kill the game faster, I have to say, you are incorrect.

How much time would it take you to get those merits? The ones you would actually put forth an effort to obtain instead of just spending your VW exp on them every now and then, I mean. Even if you're a casual player, you could finish that in one billing period.

I enjoy the fact that I am uniquely good at bard because I have invested my merits specifically into bard. I lose these defining characteristics which help to make me who I am so you can spend a few afternoons getting merits which "wouldn't even make the game any easier" for you? You can still play bard without singing merits, you'll just have a harder time landing songs on enemies than I will. I can still play samurai, I'll just do slightly less damage than a meritted samurai because I've specialized around bard, thief, and corsair.

These sorts of distinctions are a healthy thing in RPGs, particularly when it comes to forming and maintaining a varied community. You can master a few things and stay mediocre in others, or you can choose to be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none.

I oppose the idea of removing the merit cap. I would sooner have the lesser-used merits buffed to a point where the playerbase would find them useful so we get more variety, not less.

I am really not in the mood to argue trivial matters like this, the simple matter of it is, you are probably the only person who knows your unique, so no one but you actually cares about your special BRD merits. When I goto a VW party I could go RDM, or I could be stuck on any other job in the game even though the majority of my merits are RDM focused, guess how many people care that I actually focused my merits on RDM? No one, because no one else sees them except on AH.com, and even then, who cares? The point is that its a false sense of being unique in my opinion, which is all it is, an opinion, and for that reason no one is right or wrong, but it seems we mostly have people here who think its a better idea to simply go with unlimited merits rather than limited merits I think.

Trivial matters like this... false sense of being unique...

Sorry, but have I done something to offend you besides having a differing opinion? I assure you it has never been my intent to cause you harm, merely to call attention to the fact that an RPG which lets you be the best at everything is not really a role playing game at all. It's a god-sim.

A person must be good at some things, and they must be bad at some things. If you're good at all things, why would you ever seek the help of an itinerant minstrel when you yourself can handle that role just as well? Why would you grudgingly pay for the services of a surly mercenary if you're every bit as good at hewing bones as he is? We're not playing this game to be the best at everything. We're playing to take part in a story that we ourselves help write. If you think that no character in this story is unique then... well, I suppose there's no convincing you otherwise.

I have yet to play a good RPG which allows the character to have no weak points. You're accepting the role of a character. All his strengths, all his shortcomings.

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Originally Posted by Yinnyth

Trivial matters like this... false sense of being unique...

Sorry, but have I done something to offend you besides having a differing opinion? I assure you it has never been my intent to cause you harm, merely to call attention to the fact that an RPG which lets you be the best at everything is not really a role playing game at all. It's a god-sim.

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Nah sorry, was in a pissy mood and looked at posts like a derp so I wonderfully threw some of my rage into my post like an Ahole.

In all honesty though I feel no more or less unique than the next RDM, merits in general annoy me more as a RDM because mine are fairly horrid in my opinion since its entire spells I am missing, most of which are my most unique spells of all. So in one respect I hate merits as my main job is worse off because of them.

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Originally Posted by Yinnyth

I enjoy the fact that I am uniquely good at bard because I have invested my merits specifically into bard.

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Okay, so you have Troubadour and Nightingale maxed just like every other BRD. You have minuet capped and no one cares about the other song you capped, but it's probably madrigal - just like every other BRD. A BRD with MACC staves has no trouble landing songs, so those singing merits are wasted (if you have those) and the instrument skills are wasted because they're unneeded for anything. I don't even want to imagine what ridiculous stats you merited but none of those are making you "uniquely good" at BRD either. The difference between a good BRD and a "regular" BRD are affinity casting time magian staves, MACC magian staves, 99 Daurdabla and Gjallarhorn, and knowledge of how to overwrite Dardaubla songs with Gjallarhorn songs properly. None of these distinctions come from the merit system.

So actually, you're not uniquely good at BRD. You just made poor choices and are worse at other things. This is exactly what I was talking about earlier when I said that a capped system ends up penalizing people who make poor decisions more than it does more competitive players, because less informed players will dedicate slots to things that they think are helping them but actually aren't and will just be further behind in other areas.

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These sorts of distinctions are a healthy thing in RPGs, particularly when it comes to forming and maintaining a varied community. You can master a few things and stay mediocre in others, or you can choose to be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none.

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Except that's not actually what happens. When good players are presented with a cost-system (limits) they tend to prioritize harder along the lines of the utility function.

Well! BLM is my favorite job, but I chose to merit STR/DEX for the melee jobs that I play because the extra INT contributes significantly less to my overall output on BLM than STR or DEX does for my melee jobs. I also merited HP because it helps my on all my jobs and MP just isn't all that important with sources of refresh bountiful. I would really like to have Shattersoul to play around with for my Black Mage when I'm out soloing, but Ruinator for my Beastmaster is a much stronger choice, and I just can't find room for Shattersoul with the other weapon skills I use regularly.

I repeat, a low cap rewards people who sacrifice personal preference for functionality and punishes people who merit things like instruments and CHR (even if they don't realize it).

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I oppose the idea of removing the merit cap. I would sooner have the lesser-used merits buffed to a point where the playerbase would find them useful so we get more variety, not less.

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People would still overwhelmingly favor the most useful options. If more options from each job-specific merit category became useful then people would just try to bring 2 of that job instead of one and exclude people based on the combination of abilities they already have present in the group.

It will go from:

Sorry, we're looking for a DRG with Angon 5/5 . Do you have BRD?

to

Sorry, we already have a WAR with those two abilities. We're actually looking for a WAR with these other two abilities now. Do you have BRD?

Diversity is great and all but people will still overwhelmingly favor the most efficient solution.

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an RPG which lets you be the best at everything is not really a role playing game at all. It's a god-sim.

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Good to know that all that separates good players from being Gods is 12 in a bunch of uncommonly used stats , 150 MP, weapon skills for derping around on weaker jobs, and 16 accuracy / attack on weapons we favor less often.

Removing the cap would have ultimately zero negative impact on any player. I'm sorry but I'm just not willing to factor your feelings into a mathematical reality. Completionists would cap everything and have something to do, and people who don't want to cap everything would just continue on as per usual (although they'd probably end up dumping merits into random things anyway but I don't see how that's harmful to them).

That aside :

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They won't uncap it though which is why I think they should just raise the cap to the point where the probability of people being annoyed by it is low.

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(And for the record, I'm not a "cap everything" person. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been on a job besides DNC in the past month and two of those were to sit by the fountain in Adoulin on PUP).

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Okay, so you have Troubadour and Nightingale maxed just like every other BRD. You have minuet capped and no one cares about the other song you capped, but it's probably madrigal - just like every other BRD. A BRD with MACC staves has no trouble landing songs, so those singing merits are wasted (if you have those) and the instrument skills are wasted because they're unneeded for anything. I don't even want to imagine what ridiculous stats you merited but none of those are making you "uniquely good" at BRD either. The difference between a good BRD and a "regular" BRD are affinity casting time magian staves, MACC magian staves, 99 Daurdabla and Gjallarhorn, and knowledge of how to overwrite Dardaubla songs with Gjallarhorn songs properly. None of these distinctions come from the merit system.

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you're describing what the REAL problem is with merits IMO, and that is some (not all) jobs have no real choice when it comes to merit simply because every merit is crap except this one, or you don't really need more of this stat on this job. However this also counters the argument that not having these merits makes your job unplayable in these cases. None of the merits should be 'useless." if they don't do anything, they should be changed so they DO do something. Of course, this is just as unlikely as a cap change...

Edit: You removed these parts, But i think I'll still address them for you.

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-you aren't a "cap everything" person, so this doesn't benefit you, or anyone like you who don't care that they can't get everything, because they're not trying to

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Even these people will still put their merits into something when they're 30/30, They wont actively try too, but they'll dump them when they have them. Giving them something to do with those merits. So, Yes, it would benefit them, even if its a sense of "Well, Least this exp isn't going to waste".

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-people who are "cap everything' people just want everything capped for the sake of capping it, and not because they're actually any better or worse off for it.

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Your reasoning for their actions is a tad off mark. The "Cap everything" folk do it expressly for the fact that they want to be better. To them, having category caps and allowing you to max em all would be exactly what they've wanted becaue it allows them to be equally good on all their jobs, which they leveled for a reason. (some different than others)

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-other people don't benefit because their merits are nearly irrelevant, according to you

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If you're using this as a counter-point, you have to admit uncapping merits isn't going to suddenly drop armageddon on FFXI and kill the game cause its like playin' with a Game Shark.

With that said, Benefit or not, the effects are still there, the bonuses are still there. My THF Cat 2 Merit arangements put me at 1 Aura Steal, 5/5 Feint, 4/5 Asscharge, I'd love to have all of those 5/5. While not many people would notice my Aura Steal having a high rate, I would, and thats why i bother min-maxing, to improve my character, myself. Artifically placed limits and choices dont help me with my char, it just severely limits what i can do on my other jobs.

I often think I'd like to play BST Again, but realize I don't have Ruinator, and it lessens my want to play it. I'd like to take up SAM, but i have no room for Shoha.. Same problem... Having these limits lessens my want to play on these jobs because i feel subpar, even with the best gear i can get, some of these WS offer clear and irreplaceable bonuses to the job.

And this is unfair in a game with 22 Jobs all of which you have and are encouraged to level at any time. Now, Being able to fully level all jobs available to you? This is an example of good Game design. I would probably never have played this game if they treated it like, say, crafting. How much would you like FFXI if you could only have 1 99 job, and the rest cant go past 49... That would be nothing more than a "Choice" system as you describe it just like merits are.

And honestly, It would be stupid, unfun, and wouldn't really promote choices, so much as it would replace 22 choices with 1 forced choice. as are Merit Limitations.

In bizzarrro world: Limiting the amount of customization == allowing customization... While allowing you to customize anything you want ruins customization....

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Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

In bizzarrro world: Limiting the amount of customization == allowing customization... While allowing you to customize anything you want ruins customization....

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To be honest I understand both points of view. Customization in and of itself is normally done for unique qualities which are special, by letting everyone cap them all, you are no longer special, as everyone can cap everything and be the same, thus, nothing special, and no customization. For instance, when you get a custom car, it is unique and specially made, not simply another car like all of the others of its kind.

The problems with this are...

A: Most jobs have a number of merits that are worthless, or are at least not good enough to be deserving of merits, thanks to this most people pick the same things anyways so it mostly voids the entire idea of merits being special, as Sylow pointed out, BRDs almost always have Nightingale, Troubadour, and Minuet, as well as probably Madrigal.

B: Even if they made all merits fair and equal in use, it would create the problem of restricting content even more than things like VW did. You would see shouts which request jobs with certain merits if they are truly that useful, for instance my RDM has fully merited Dia III and Phalanx, so when a shout comes by looking for RDM, but they must have Para/Slow II, I'm screwed out of going because my merits do not match up. Really this is a more likely scenario right now than a possible one, but the point is when all merits are equal, it adds more limitations on job selection and requirements on joining parties.

A big problem with the proposed change is that many of the merit ws's are barely ahead of other options.

For example, Catastrophe and Coronach (with 99 relics) are barely behind the Entropy and Last Stand (respectively). If you are to go 4/5, it isn't worth the effort to put any in at all. (1/5 possibly for mp sake for Entropy, but Drk doesn't use its mp much anyways).

Shoha is beaten by Kaiten/Fudo in some situations. Evisceration beats Exenterator at times. The list goes on.

Many people invest millions of gil into gear for slight increases. These are the same people that would not go 4/5 in a ws because it negates alot of the effort they put into their gear. A 95 Ragnarok with 5/5 Reso could outdo a 99 Ragnarok with 4/5 Reso (although Crobachi can beat out Ragnarok, but that is another matter).

A better change to the merit ws's would be to increase the cap from 15 to 20. In the weapon category, you can fully merit 4 weapon types. It makes sense that you should be able to fully merit 4 weaponskills.


For reference:
99 Ragnarok, 99 Apocalypse, 99 Twashtar, 95 Annihilator, 90 Verethragna
5/5 Resolution, 5/5 Entropy, 5/5 Exenterator (I used to have 5/5 Last Stand, but I use Apoc more than Anni)

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Originally Posted by Demon6324236

To be honest I understand both points of view. Customization in and of itself is normally done for unique qualities which are special, by letting everyone cap them all, you are no longer special, as everyone can cap everything and be the same, thus, nothing special, and no customization. For instance, when you get a custom car, it is unique and specially made, not simply another car like all of the others of its kind.

The problems with this are...

A: Most jobs have a number of merits that are worthless, or are at least not good enough to be deserving of merits, thanks to this most people pick the same things anyways so it mostly voids the entire idea of merits being special, as Sylow pointed out, BRDs almost always have Nightingale, Troubadour, and Minuet, as well as probably Madrigal.

B: Even if they made all merits fair and equal in use, it would create the problem of restricting content even more than things like VW did. You would see shouts which request jobs with certain merits if they are truly that useful, for instance my RDM has fully merited Dia III and Phalanx, so when a shout comes by looking for RDM, but they must have Para/Slow II, I'm screwed out of going because my merits do not match up. Really this is a more likely scenario right now than a possible one, but the point is when all merits are equal, it adds more limitations on job selection and requirements on joining parties.

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The thing is that with a custom car, it is custom because there are a million different options as far as paint, body work and parts that you can use and the odds of everyone choosing the same stuff as you are slim because everyone has different priorities and different incomes levels and different schedules.

Final fantasy is similar. You can customize your character through races and genders and hair etc. You also have thousands of pieces of gear to choose from and thousands of different macros and gear sets that you can use to further mix and match them.

While it's true that everyone will gravitate towards the best there is available, that doesn't mean that everyone will be the same. See just like in real life, everyone in FFXI has a different schedule, goal and income level to support their gear etc. with. So in reality, even though we all have access to all the same gear etc. Everyone is still quite different in terms of both gear and play style.

I'm sure that we would all like a Lamborghini and there is no law saying that we can't all have one... yet most of us don't have one.

This is also true in final fantasy. There are thousands of things to do or obtain in game that everyone has access to and yet many choose to ignore. This is how true customization works.

TLDR; Capping weapon skills actually has the opposite effect (assuming you wanted to inspire customization). It causes most people to gravitate towards the most desired skill and ignore the less useful ones even more than they would if they were left to their own devices. It actually has the tendency to passively force everyone to be the same.

While I agree that the current system does not work as well as it should for customization purposes, I disagree that uncapping merit categories increases customization. If exp grinding were no object, they may as well just give every character those boosts innately.

I still believe the fix is not a matter of lifting the caps, but improving/replacing the merits that people don't see as useful. SE boosted the benefits of high AGI and high VIT in (relatively) recent updates. Similar things could be done for CHR and MND to encourage diversity in the attributes a player chooses to merit.

Aggressive aim is poo unless they make some damned good reasons for wars to use ranged weapons, and even then it needs to be boosted. Make it so aggressor automatically boosts ranged acc, and aggressive aim grants a crit damage bonus while aggressor is active.

All the merits should be re-examined and balanced. The differences in merit choices we make are one of the few things that differentiate FFXI from Team Fortress 2.

Ideally all of the abilities should be useful but if they ARE all useful it would lead to a lot of unhappy players when they get excluded for having the wrong combination for the moment unless they were to make them like Blue Magic spells where you can switch out which you currently have access to on the fly (but only from your Mog House)

Or here's a thought. Why not give it so we can fully cap half the possible merit weaponskills? I think raising the max amount of merits u can put in from 15 to 35 is much easier on everyone.

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Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

In bizzarrro world: Limiting the amount of customization == allowing customization... While allowing you to customize anything you want ruins customization....

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Allowing you to merit anything isn't customizing. There's nothing "custom" about unlocking everything. Your idea of "customization" is apparently conciously choosing to gimp oneself for the sake of being different. That's what you're telling me- The only way to customize my character is to choose not to do things that most people are going to do because there's little reason not to. Caps on merits do not limit customization, they enable it. This isn't bizaaro world, this is reality.

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If exp grinding were no object, they may as well just give every character those boosts innately.

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This- it takes little time to get the xp to merit all your stuff. If there are no limits and no decisions have to be made, they may as well just remove the system and give everyone all the merit abilities and stats as normal level up effects. If the customization provided by the merits is an illusion as some say, then removing the system altogether is the best way to remove the illusion.

It's also worth mention that most alternate advancement systems in games that don't limit you take a VERY long time to max out.

I'm reminded of the system Rift uses. 6 large hex grids, each customized to your class, you spent exp to unlock individual hexes to get permanent bonuses. They later added 2 more grids for EACH of the original 6.

To compair: In the time it would take a player to max out a single tier of a single grid in Rift, you could max out every single catagory in the merit menu.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Allowing you to merit anything isn't customizing. There's nothing "custom" about unlocking everything. Your idea of "customization" is apparently conciously choosing to gimp oneself for the sake of being different. That's what you're telling me- The only way to customize my character is to choose not to do things that most people are going to do because there's little reason not to. Caps on merits do not limit customization, they enable it. This isn't bizaaro world, this is reality.

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SO you have every job leveled, every merit possible spent, you have every piece of gear available and your macros are all perfect right? That's why you are saying that gimping your weapon skills would be the only form of customization right?

See because I find it hard to believe that you can even name one person who has run out of ways to be different other than arbitrary limitations. I think you are talking out of your third input.

Not doing something that doesn't interest you or that you do not have the time or money to do is not gimping yourself. It is called making an informed decision.

You leveled another job besides pup right? Is it because you have an absolutely perfect PUP and you have nothing left to do? Or is it because you choose to spend your time improving and perfecting another job?

Let's apply your logic to a currently uncapped category:

Anyone can build any E/R/M weapon that they choose right now.

Why don't you have 99 Kenkonken with afterglow? I say it's because you chose to customize your character in other ways instead, but according to the above logic, you in fact chose to be a gimp because you felt like it was the only way you could customize seeing as anyone can have them if they so choose.

Sounds pretty silly to me.

Broken logic is broken.

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Originally Posted by Tirantus

It's also worth mention that most alternate advancement systems in games that don't limit you take a VERY long time to max out.

I'm reminded of the system Rift uses. 6 large hex grids, each customized to your class, you spent exp to unlock individual hexes to get permanent bonuses. They later added 2 more grids for EACH of the original 6.

To compair: In the time it would take a player to max out a single tier of a single grid in Rift, you could max out every single catagory in the merit menu.

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I would be perfectly fine with them making upping the cost of merit points in exchange for the ability to merit more things as long as they didn't get ridiculous with it.

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Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

I would be perfectly fine with them making upping the cost of merit points in exchange for the ability to merit more things as long as they didn't get ridiculous with it.

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Knowing SE I would say be careful what you wish for. I can see it now, they raise the max merit point cap to 100. But nothing costs less than 10 MP to upgrade and increases exponentially from there. In a situation like that I wouldn't put it past them to make the merit WS progression 10/25/50/75/100.

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SO you have every job leveled, every merit possible spent, you have every piece of gear available and your macros are all perfect right? That's why you are saying that gimping your weapon skills would be the only form of customization right?

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This isn't just about weapon skills, it's about the game as a whole. You're telling me that the only customizaiton that is and should be in the game is "choose not to level this job, choose not to merit this, choose not to do that. You'll be more gimp, but you'll at least be unique."

When you require that people choose between having one thing and having another (versus choosing whether or not you bother getting something), you customize in a positive way- by having something not everybody else has, instead of in a negative way- by choosing not to have something everyone else has or can have.

And I'm talking about the merit system as a whole, not just the weapon skills category. I'm seeing requests to remove all merit limits, not just weapon skills.

All they need is a respec feature like every other game has, allo2wing you to reconfigre your merits (in your MH, not just anywhere) without having to farm more merit points (maybe just charge a small fee in banked merit points for the respec). I always did feel it was silly that merits are lost when you undo them.

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Let's apply your logic to a currently uncapped category:

Anyone can build any E/R/M weapon that they choose right now.

Why don't you have 99 Kenkonken with afterglow? I say it's because you chose to customize your character in other ways instead, but according to the above logic, you in fact chose to be a gimp because you felt like it was the only way you could customize seeing as anyone can have them if they so choose.

Sounds pretty silly to me.

Broken logic is broken.

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Broken logic is broken- except that it's your interpretaiton of my logic that's broken.

What you said about "the above logic" in your post is basically true: in many cases, choosing not to get a R/E/M weapon is basically choosing to gimp yourself- at least by most elitist's standards. If all the merit categories are uncapped, the same thing will happen with them. anyone who chooses not to max them all out is choosing to gimp themselves. Many elitists out there will say you're choosing to be gimp if you don't choose / aren't able to obtain the latest and greatest gear.

The difference with your example though is a 99 afterglow weapon is so time consuming to get that you can't choose everything. Under the current merit system, if the categories were all uncapped, it wouldn't take all that much time cap everything out.

I would be less opposed to them doing it if meriting took so much time that it wasn't practical to max everything out- the problem with this is it would be unfair to everyone who hasn't already merited a ton of stuff unless they hit the reset button on the whole thing.

Several years ago your argument would have been sound Al, but the game has changed. There's no point in having the unique butterfly merit upgrades in a game which encourages you to be proficient at a wide variety of job types.

I agree that it is incredibly entitled to demand more merits, and is a silly thing to say you're gimp if you don't have max merits for all jobs you play but in today's Final Fantasy XI it makes more sense. What makes a player unique nowadays is what gear they have and what jobs they can play.

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Originally Posted by Jackstin

Several years ago your argument would have been sound Al, but the game has changed. There's no point in having the unique butterfly merit upgrades in a game which encourages you to be proficient at a wide variety of job types.

I agree that it is incredibly entitled to demand more merits, and is a silly thing to say you're gimp if you don't have max merits for all jobs you play but in today's Final Fantasy XI it makes more sense. What makes a player unique nowadays is what gear they have and what jobs they can play.

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I see what you're saying but it's a problem to me nonetheless. the merit point system should be fixed/tweaked/whatever needs to be done to keep it the customization system it was originally intended to be (or add a new system entirely). I don't think gear, which for the most part has clear choices that are "the best", should be the sole customization component in the game.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

This isn't just about weapon skills, it's about the game as a whole. You're telling me that the only customizaiton that is and should be in the game is "choose not to level this job, choose not to merit this, choose not to do that. You'll be more gimp, but you'll at least be unique."

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No, you're saying that. I'm saying that people don't have the need, time, desire, or financial means to do everything in the game and that for that reason, customization happens naturally regardless of boundaries put in place to force individuality.

If you could name even one person who had everything in the game, or even a single person who had exactly the same job levels, gear and macros as you, you might have a point, but the fact is that you cannot because such a person does not exist. Even if you could find such a person, one person having capped everything or two people who have the exact same jobs, gear etc. does not constitute the need for an arbitrary system that affects the entire populous.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

When you require that people choose between having one thing and having another (versus choosing whether or not you bother getting something), you customize in a positive way- by having something not everybody else has, instead of in a negative way- by choosing not to have something everyone else has or can have.

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I'm not sure that you understand what the word positive means. Positive is having the ability to play as much of the game as you choose. Negative is being told "You can't play this part because that kid over there wants to have something that you can't have".

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

And I'm talking about the merit system as a whole, not just the weapon skills category. I'm seeing requests to remove all merit limits, not just weapon skills.

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There are threads for that too. This one is about the weapon skill category and it should be unlocked or at the very least raised.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

All they need is a respec feature like every other game has, allo2wing you to reconfigre your merits (in your MH, not just anywhere) without having to farm more merit points (maybe just charge a small fee in banked merit points for the respec). I always did feel it was silly that merits are lost when you undo them.

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That part I could agree with. If they upped the number of merits that you could store and gave swapping merits a fairly high cost, this could be a huge reason to get people meriting again.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Broken logic is broken- except that it's your interpretaiton of my logic that's broken.

What you said about "the above logic" in your post is basically true: in many cases, choosing not to get a R/E/M weapon is basically choosing to gimp yourself- at least by most elitist's standards. If all the merit categories are uncapped, the same thing will happen with them. anyone who chooses not to max them all out is choosing to gimp themselves. Many elitists out there will say you're choosing to be gimp if you don't choose / aren't able to obtain the latest and greatest gear.

The difference with your example though is a 99 afterglow weapon is so time consuming to get that you can't choose everything. Under the current merit system, if the categories were all uncapped, it wouldn't take all that much time cap everything out.

I would be less opposed to them doing it if meriting took so much time that it wasn't practical to max everything out- the problem with this is it would be unfair to everyone who hasn't already merited a ton of stuff unless they hit the reset button on the whole thing.

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My view of your logic isn't broken. I understand exactly what you are trying to say. It just doesn't work.

Regardless of why people choose not to build every E/R/M or get every piece of cool gear for every job, or do every quest and obtain every title or level every craft or pick galka instead of elves etc. the fact remains that they are all unique snowflakes because of those decisions already and do not need the merit category to enforce that.

I think having more WS merit would make the game more enjoyable. I'd like 7~9 WS with 5/5 but 5 WS would be ok. The current restriction is like telling you "you can only like 3 jobs". You have to abandon jobs you are interested in but not enough to make them your bread-butter job. I like Monk and Bst so I have Shijin Spiral and Ruinator leveled. I also like Warrior but I'm interested in Rng, Drg, Drk, Thf and Sam. With only 5 merit left, I can only 'like' one more job. I don't have enough time or money to get R/M/E for these all these jobs and I prefer to try the new weapons rather than stuck with a lv90 weapon. If I level Tachi: Shoha then my Rng will not be very useful and won't be used even if I equip it. I can un-'like' a job and level Last Stand but I don't want to dislike a job I liked.

This is not hypothetical case. This is pretty much my current situation. I'd like to have a stronger WS for my Thf but I'm stuck with Dancing Edge (outside of Abby) so I don't want to invest in Thf even if I like it. I'd love to level Rng but I don't want to use Rng much so I don't want to put merits into Last Stand. However, not having Last Stand will make my Rng very obsolete as I only have Slug Shot. I have no choice but to stop playing Rng.

Even with the update, I'd still be very limited in my choices on jobs I get to like. Even with 2/5 merit, some merit WS are comparable to previous WSs so I don't think I'd want to spend merits on side-grades.

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I'm not sure that you understand what the word positive means. Positive is having the ability to play as much of the game as you choose. Negative is being told "You can't play this part because that kid over there wants to have something that you can't have".

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I looked up the definition of those words in the dictionary, and it didn't match what you wrote here.

Just saying.

It is generally a bad idea in a community based game to make a character's power at a given level completely dependent on nothing but a time investment.

Most really good gear requires either teamwork or clear skill. Merits may require these but they certainly require less of either.

If Samurai A is the same as or stronger than Samurai B even though Samurai B is totally devoted to Samurai and Samurai A just has more time to play, your design has failed Samurai B in a community based game. This may however make Samurai A happier.

That's all this is in the end, this 'argument'. Lots of Samurai A not caring how Samurai B is affected, and arguing that people who do care that Samurai B is affected are all being illogical and stupid.

If you find 4/5 to be horrible and make your job unworthy of bothering to play, think of all those people who, for whatever time restrictive reason, haven't reached 4/5 yet on whatever. If that makes no sense to you, you are Samurai A.

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Originally Posted by Randnum

It is generally a bad idea in a community based game to make a character's power at a given level completely dependent on nothing but a time investment.

Most really good gear requires either teamwork or clear skill. Merits may require these but they certainly require less of either.

If Samurai A is the same as or stronger than Samurai B even though Samurai B is totally devoted to Samurai and Samurai A just has more time to play, your design has failed Samurai B in a community based game. This may however make Samurai A happier.

That's all this is in the end, this 'argument'. Lots of Samurai A not caring how Samurai B is affected, and arguing that people who do care that Samurai B is affected are all being illogical and stupid.

If you find 4/5 to be horrible and make your job unworthy of bothering to play, think of all those people who, for whatever time restrictive reason, haven't reached 4/5 yet on whatever. If that makes no sense to you, you are Samurai A.

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What you are implying is that samurai B should be better than samurai A simply because (he thinks) he likes samurai more than samurai A.

I am not samurai A. I am simply a fair and logical human being who understands the correlation between hard work and reward.

Saying that you should be better than someone else simply because you think that they don't want it as much as you do, despite the fact that that person has put far more time and effort into it than you is ludicrous. Talk about entitlement...

As I said. Community based game.

But I give you this.

If Samurai A liked playing Samurai as much as Samurai B does, then they merited Samurai first. Then, technically, any complaint they have would be about another job, making it Red Mage A vs Red Mage B, or such.

So your argument, while 'technically' correct in any non community gamestate, fails here. Entitlement applies when one person gets opportunities in this way.

You have the same opportunities as Samurai B, you just want more of them.

Edit: See, you could reduce this to a different absurdity. If I like NIN best, why do I have to stop at 5/5? Why can't I just keep getting stronger and stronger Blade: Shun? Even if it tapers off and the bonus diminishes, why can't I just keep boosting it little by little forever? That way my hard work rewards me, right? But then what will you stop at? If the game had both options open... unlimited Merit WS and unlimited WS mod growth, would you be 'gimp' or 'unwilling to play it' if you noticed that serious NIN had their Blade: Shun at 20/20 and yours was only at 8?

If not, why are you 'unwilling to play' at 4/5 while the 'serious' play at 5/5?

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Originally Posted by Randnum

If Samurai A liked playing Samurai as much as Samurai B does, then they merited Samurai first. Then, technically, any complaint they have would be about another job, making it Red Mage A vs Red Mage B, or such.

So your argument, while 'technically' correct in any non community gamestate, fails here. Entitlement applies when one person gets opportunities in this way.

You have the same opportunities as Samurai B, you just want more of them.

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Your argument works both ways. Should they raise / delete the cap, Samurai B would have the same opportunities. He would just want less of them.

The difference being that when there is no cap, we both have the ability to do what we want. Where as when there is a cap, he gets to do what he chooses, while I am limited. His Samurai is exactly the same in either case and suffers no penalty other than his perceived (It has already been pointed out that most people who play samurai or whatever job will have the same merits as other people playing that job) lack of uniqueness.

You are essentially saying that People should only be allowed to have 3 good weapon skills because That's how many it takes to keep samurai B happy and that somehow 3 is the perfect number and Samurai B is more important than everyone else.

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Originally Posted by Randnum

Edit: See, you could reduce this to a different absurdity. If I like NIN best, why do I have to stop at 5/5? Why can't I just keep getting stronger and stronger Blade: Shun? Even if it tapers off and the bonus diminishes, why can't I just keep boosting it little by little forever? That way my hard work rewards me, right? But then what will you stop at? If the game had both options open... unlimited Merit WS and unlimited WS mod growth, would you be 'gimp' or 'unwilling to play it' if you noticed that serious NIN had their Blade: Shun at 20/20 and yours was only at 8?

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This is pretty off topic. I want to be on par with others who have put in the same amount of work as me. You make it sound like I want to be better than them. If that guy wants to work harder on his ninja, his ninja should be better than mine. He shouldn't have to suffer just because I really like ninja but I don't have the time/desire to merit it as well as him.

Let's apply your argument to some other absurdity: Say I only want to work 10 hours a week and make $100 a week because I'm a balding middle aged Mongoloid who lives in my grandmas basement and I like to play video games more than I like to earn money. According to your logic, everyone should have to live on 10/hrs a week at a salary of $100 because I'm too preoccupied with other things to earn more money than that. It would be totally unfair if you got to make more money just because you had more time to get an education and work longer hours right?

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Originally Posted by Randnum

If not, why are you 'unwilling to play' at 4/5 while the 'serious' play at 5/5?

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Who says I am not serious? Are you really positing that people who have all jobs leveled and geared are not as serious as people who only have one or two jobs? Think about that. If your favorite job is warrior, you can't even have all the weaponskills for that one job. I guess anyone who plays warrior can't be serious about any other jobs huh?

Never said anything one way or the other about the decision, I am only pointing out one logic thing.

You want to be the best you can, for equal work. You can do that. You actually agree with me in the second section. That if the NIN wants to be really good for their effort then they should. But they can't. Note that part, it's my only direct point.

I understand that this only partially applies because 'you can't use all the WS on one job', but it still overall makes your character in a community perspective better.

All I'm saying is what you are saying, but with a different perspective. You get limited in your number of WS for the same reason that Hypothetical Ninja is limited in the total strength of their WS.

If every increase after level 5 in the WS was just 1% more, they would have a 5% difference in their WS strength after a certain number of merit points. Would you be willing to accept this 5% difference? That your personal NIN was 5% weaker in a WS than theirs? I may have misinterpreted you but you seem like you would, because that's reasonable to you.

I'm just saying that in a game of arbitrary limits, the current change is decent... no... quite good, because your 4/5 WS is only 5% weaker than 'Samurai B's' 5/5 WS. If 5% is a big deal for any reason other than 'it isn't the maximum', then you'll keep meriting to keep up with Hypothetical Ninja.

I am getting the impression, therefore, that you want to reach the cap because it is the cap. Am I wrong in this? Are you not dissatisfied with needing to choose 4/5 simply because 5/5 exists?

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Originally Posted by Randnum

Never said anything one way or the other about the decision, I am only pointing out one logic thing.

You want to be the best you can, for equal work. You can do that. You actually agree with me in the second section. That if the NIN wants to be really good for their effort then they should. But they can't. Note that part, it's my only direct point.

I understand that this only partially applies because 'you can't use all the WS on one job', but it still overall makes your character in a community perspective better.

All I'm saying is what you are saying, but with a different perspective. You get limited in your number of WS for the same reason that Hypothetical Ninja is limited in the total strength of their WS.

If every increase after level 5 in the WS was just 1% more, they would have a 5% difference in their WS strength after a certain number of merit points. Would you be willing to accept this 5% difference? That your personal NIN was 5% weaker in a WS than theirs? I may have misinterpreted you but you seem like you would, because that's reasonable to you.

I'm just saying that in a game of arbitrary limits, the current change is decent... no... quite good, because your 4/5 WS is only 5% weaker than 'Samurai B's' 5/5 WS. If 5% is a big deal for any reason other than 'it isn't the maximum', then you'll keep meriting to keep up with Hypothetical Ninja.

I am getting the impression, therefore, that you want to reach the cap because it is the cap. Am I wrong in this? Are you not dissatisfied with needing to choose 4/5 simply because 5/5 exists?

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To sum it up. I am fine with doing 95% damage because I didn't put in enough effort to do 100% damage.

I am not okay with doing 95% damage because someone decided that that makes other people feel special.

This cap limits the enjoyment for people who have more than a few jobs leveled. In large group settings people generally want you to come on the job that does 100% damage. Not the job that does 95% damage. When you limit the selection of weapon skills, people generally feel forced to spend them on the jobs with the most damage potential to begin with. Typically War, Sam Monk and Dark. When you combine the fact that those jobs are already more desirable to begin with and the fact that other jobs now have an additional weapon skill handicap, you get a very lopsided event roster.

In respect to the fact that You can only ever use one weapon skill at a time: Of course having more weapon skills than the next guy makes you a more desirable player, but so does everything else that you do to improve your character so there is no point worrying about that.

I have ninja leveled. My ninja is far better than my friends because he didn't bother to gear it. He doesn't like ninja. If you remove the cap, he might run out of things to merit and decide to dump 5/5 into katana just because he has the time / merits to do it. It won't change the fact that he has shitty gear, macros and skills on ninja though. As long as he doesn't care enough about ninja to build better gear sets than me, build better macros than me and practice until he is in fact better than me, it won't make a lick of difference. I will still be special regardless of his merits.

This whole argument of needing caps in order to foster originality or something is ludicrous. It's like people really believe that every SAM/WAR/DRK main is gonna suddenly start showing up to every event on PUP and take up all the spots just because they finally got their H2H weapon skills unlocked.

People who like the jobs like DNC, PUP, SMN etc. feel like they have to gimp their favorite jobs in order to make their more group friendly jobs like SAM etc. as good as can be. I don't really see how that benefits anyone.

My disagreement with you is purely in the idea that you are upset with being limited 'to make someone else feel special'.

My point is that unless all limits are removed, removing that particular one does in fact make someone else less special. That someone may also do the same amount of work because there's a different limit in place. Whether the limits should exist at all isn't my gripe with what you are saying at all. I'd love to just get Blade: Shun at level 90 and I'd love to be able to merit it endlessly at 1% per merit after 5 merits. This would increase my enjoyment. I don't personally know why merit WS are even merited.

But if they are, and therefore somehow intended to make people stronger, then limiting 'me' to 5/5 on NIN but having no limit in general means simply that for your effort you get a stronger character and for my effort I get to compete with yours.

If I play 20 hours a week and devote it all to NIN, and you play 20 hours a week and spread it out over 5 jobs, why exactly do I not deserve to be better at NIN than you are?

tl;dr version: Allowing more lateral expansion than vertical expansion overall does in fact disadvantage specialist players so they limited both to let specialists feel special, yes.

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Who says I am not serious? Are you really positing that people who have all jobs leveled and geared are not as serious as people who only have one or two jobs? Think about that. If your favorite job is warrior, you can't even have all the weaponskills for that one job. I guess anyone who plays warrior can't be serious about any other jobs huh?

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Warrior doesn't need every weapon skill. I don't know any warriors who use more than probably three weapon types any other time than in voidwatch for procs. Outside of that, you're probably just going to use the strongest slashing, blunt, or piercing weapon and WS. Three weapon skills covers that.

There's a difference between 'want' and 'need.' I can't think of a compelling *need* for more than three merit WS on any single job.

In the end FrankReynolds is primarily right, but it comes down to what I said at the beginning.

"That's all this is in the end, this 'argument'. Lots of Samurai A not caring how Samurai B is affected, and arguing that people who do care that Samurai B is affected are all being illogical and stupid."

As long as there are limits, 'Samurai B' is affected because as you said, people want you at 100%, but then you have to compete with all the other 100%.

I believe you mean to say that you feel that you should be chosen equally to 'Samurai B' because you put in enough work to get the same WS/result, not because of some arbitrary 'badge of dedication', which is what the merit WS system is.

But if it's only through that arbitrary, possibly ridiculous 'badge' that Samurai B can stand out at a given level... if the intention of this system is to give people a quicker 'badge' to 'wear' than 'building a Relic, Mythic or Empyrean to max level', then the change currently planned is correct.

Community games don't work without these little 'badges'. Maybe this particular one is unnecessary, I have no stance on that, so you are right in all things except that you are fundamentally going "I don't want to be limited so that others feel special" because without that limit, the only limit still functional is the one preventing them from actually being special. Samurai A does make out better than Samurai B, because while you can go "I merited Shoha to full, I can be your Samurai." and it have a little meaning, you can expect much less effect from "I play Samurai all the time and try to be my best" with the same result, cause you will just go "so do I".