Please raise the combat and weaopn skill max merits

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

When I talk about being the best at eveverything, I mean from a statistical standpoint, not a player skill standpoint.

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And I don't necessarily mean either of the two. There is a third and glaring item that you neglected and that is the million or so pieces of gear weapons and spells that can be used to far more effectively differentiate yourself. It takes weeks, months, years to acquire the gear and build the skills to be the best. That should not be undermined by an arbitrary limitation put on a skill that takes a couple of hours to cap.

You should be the best <insert job here> because you have put in the work and learned the job. Not because the other guy happens to be just as good at a few other jobs too. If he wants to work harder than you and practice more, then he should be better than you. You should not get a free pass just because you don't play many jobs.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

No, there isn't a difference. Necessitating the choices is the whole point. If there are no limits, you don't have to make any choices- you can just choose "everything." Having the limits in place means your decisions have weight- they matter. With no limits, your choices don't matter, because you will just get everything eventually.

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And this is where the nonsense comes in. You don't understand the fundamental difference between choosing to do something because either because you want to do it or you don't and being told that you must choose because you cannot do both.

The fact of the matter is that given the choice to merit all of the weapon skills, most people will not. Most people will merit the ones that they feel they need and ignore the rest.

They will make that decision without any intervention. They don't need you or anyone else to tell them to make that choice.

The guy who merits the club weapon skill? He will still be a rare bird. He will still feel just as special.

Just like you are a rare bird on PUP. Go look at the census. Thousands of people have the ability to level and play pup as much as they want. Yet most people do not. Pup is a horribly misunderstood and underestimated job. Should we limit the number of jobs that you can level to 99? How do you think that would affect Pup? I think you know already that that change would further marginalize that job. Just like you know that this cap further marginalizes less desirable jobs.

Something tells me that if pups used bells as their main weapon and you could only cap one skill, you would be pretty pissed that you had to choose bell or have a crappy pup.

So stop pretending that you don't understand why this cap hurts and annoys other people. As far as I am concerned, there are a million reasons to raise or remove the cap and the only reason you have given to keep it is because it makes you feel special.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Beyond this, merits are not permanent. You can remove them and level something else up instead. So if you decide you just can't live without Merit X, you can remove merit Y that you don't use so much and replace it. Thus, you still have the freedom of choice- you simply can't have it all simultaneously.

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So in essence, this cap exists simply to annoy people and really creates none of the diversity that you claim it does.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Okay: you just countered your own argument about limits only being destructive to a game. The limits I described you just admitted are not destructive to those games.

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I would hardly compare meriting a weapon skill to running behind the line of scrimmage and beheading the quarterback before the snap. If you really think that the two things are the same, then you are probably better off reading up on the history of the sport and finding out why the rule exists before you continue.

Whats more, those rules aren't in place to foster choice (the topic of discussion). They are there to keep the game fair for all parties. Being able to merit a weapon skill doesn't create an advantage. If someone doesn't have the weapon skill, then the group simply brings someone who does and the outcome is the same. Monsters don't die faster. They just get killed by different people / jobs.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

No, it doesn't, and I'm not wrong. I have an opinion which you happen to disagree with. This does not make it right or wrong. Again, you declaring something wrong does not make it so.

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Your opinion is wrong. Most opinions are wrong. Having an opinion and being wrong are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they often go hand in hand.

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So in essence, this cap exists simply to annoy people and really creates none of the diversity that you claim it does.

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No. It exists for balance reasons. You can get whatever you want, just not all at the same time.

I don't know how anyone can argue that it wouldn't be a balance issue to have max in every attibute and skill category, every Others category, HP/MP, etc. Yes, the job merits aren't really a balance issue because they only apply to that job. When you change jobs, those merits are ignored, so they don't impact anything else. The stat/skill merits affect all jobs and every point you get makes your character more powerful. Every main attribute except possibly CHR is in some way useable by all jobs.

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Your opinion is wrong. Most opinions are wrong. Having an opinion and being wrong are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they often go hand in hand.

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Your statement is also an opinion, and in this case, I'd have to concede and agree, because this quoted statement and "wrong" very much do go hand in hand.

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I would hardly compare meriting a weapon skill to running behind the line of scrimmage and beheading the quarterback before the snap.

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I would compare them, because they are both limitations. You argued that all limitations are a detriment to gameplay. I gave an example of limitations that are not a detriment to their associated game. Therefore, you are wrong, because you made a unilateral assertion that is false.

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So stop pretending that you don't understand why this cap hurts and annoys other people. As far as I am concerned, there are a million reasons to raise or remove the cap and the only reason you have given to keep it is because it makes you feel special.

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No. This isn't about me. It's about everybody. The merit system is a customization system, it was created to be one, however flawed it may be. It makes every character different from another. This isn't about any job I play, this isn't about any one person in particular.

The thing is, opinions can indeed be wrong.

In my opinion, the Sky is Magenta.
I'm wrong

In my Opinion, water is an option for biological life
I'm wrong

In my opinion, The Moon is cheese.
I'm. Wrong.

In my opinion, Math and gear swaps are optional to be good at FFXI.
Wrong.

It being an opinion does not dismiss it or make it immune to being wrong. These are just examples, Opinions can in fact be wrong or right depending on their context. Now, I won't (again) say directly your opinion is flat out wrong, But I'm simply stating a fact that Opinions can indeed be wrong.

Edit: Oh, and the Merit system isn't really a Unique-ness option, its more of an Idiot-Checker. 90% of the population has the same merits, or very very similar merit set ups, just like gear sets.

Diversity isn't a bad thing, it's just that it's hard to implement it well. I always like to point to RDM Group 2 merits. There were people who 5/5'd Slow II and people that 3/5'd Slow II because of group considerations, and from there you might've chosen Phalanx II for Salvage, Paralyze II for more debuffs, Dia III for zergs, Bio III for soloing etc, but none of the merits would make or break your place in the team (Well, except maybe Slow II).

My thoughts on it is that since there's 14 weapon classes, there should be about 30-40 merit levels for you to distribute between the weapon skills.

Constraints do not promote diversity. The higher the constraint (the higher the cost) the more people will favor utility over other metrics. In other words, the higher the cost of making a decision (the cost of maxing out a WS is higher when there are 3 slots to max out compared to five slots or uncapped) the more you will expect the distribution to be skewed towards options with a higher average value to the player-utility function.

I think constraints can promote diversity, but only if the choices are different enough and weighed correctly so that you're really choosing something over something else. With the merit weapon skills they all basically have the same function- to do damage, which is a more important thing than almost anything else the endgame players care about, so people always choose doing that over anything else (in this case job diversity). I guess if they instead did something like making extra merits affect add effects maybe there'd be more space to do this? (Like making 5/5 Shijin Spiral do 10/tick plague and 1/5 do 2/tick or something)

Though I guess the bigger problem is more that you can't equip multiple weapons at the same time so at any given moment you're only benefiting from one merit weapon skill. Something like Phalanx II VS Paralyze II applies whenever you're on RDM.

Constraints promote diversity of maximum state only.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

No. It exists for balance reasons. You can get whatever you want, just not all at the same time.

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It does't balance anything. People will always do events with their best geared jobs. That means that whether you allow people to merit all the weapon skills or only one weapon skill, the net result is always the same. A group of people all on jobs that have full merits.

You can't use more than one of them at a time, no matter how many you have merited. There is nothing to balance. The only difference is that without caps, people can do events on more jobs. That makes it easier to form groups. It doesn't make it easier to win battles. So unless you think that shouting in PJ needs to be balanced, I'm not sure what your talking about.

Look at it like this.

Scenario 1 - with merit cap) I have a group of 5 fully merited characters. I need a sixth. I see a samurai. He has no merits. I pass him up and grab a samurai that has maxed merits / gear.
--end result--- 6 fully merited players

Scenario 2 without merit cap) I have a group of 5 fully merited characters. I need a sixth. I see a samurai. He has full merits. I pick him up.
--end result--- 6 fully merited players

Do you see what happened??? All the merit cap did was keep that first sam from getting in my group and make me shout for five more minutes. Same balance. Same six merited jobs in the same fight.

If you really think that shouting and party forming are too easy and need to be balanced so that people don't have too easy of a time with it, then your uniqueness is far beyond the power of merit caps.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

I don't know how anyone can argue that it wouldn't be a balance issue to have max in every attibute and skill category, every Others category, HP/MP, etc. Yes, the job merits aren't really a balance issue because they only apply to that job. When you change jobs, those merits are ignored, so they don't impact anything else. The stat/skill merits affect all jobs and every point you get makes your character more powerful. Every main attribute except possibly CHR is in some way useable by all jobs.

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This thread is about the weapon skill category. I think you posted that comment in the wrong thread.

Oddly enough though, the scenarios I posted above also apply here.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Your statement is also an opinion, and in this case, I'd have to concede and agree, because this quoted statement and "wrong" very much do go hand in hand.

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Lol

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

I would compare them, because they are both limitations. You argued that all limitations are a detriment to gameplay. I gave an example of limitations that are not a detriment to their associated game. Therefore, you are wrong, because you made a unilateral assertion that is false.

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I thought it was pretty clear that my statement about lack of choice was in reference to the topic at hand and not a universal hatred of all laws and rules. Of course games have to have rules. If they didn't it would just be people doing whatever they want. The football field would be full of people doing cocaine, fighting dogs and having sex...

which would be far more entertaining actually.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

No. This isn't about me. It's about everybody. The merit system is a customization system, it was created to be one, however flawed it may be. It makes every character different from another. This isn't about any job I play, this isn't about any one person in particular.

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The game changed man. The system of customization you describe doesn't work anymore. Every event they come out with will be beaten by a group of players with fully merited weapon skills. It's as simple as that. Capping them doesn't mean that they can make easier content. It just means that people will play a less diverse selection of jobs.


In simple terms:

If you are doing an event and you have perfect gear on every job, you will play whatever job you like the best.

If you can only have 3 perfect jobs, then those are the only three that you will get to play frequently.

If you only like 3 jobs then hooray for you.

If you like more than 3 then you are screwed.

How does that sound fun to any sane person?

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Scenario 1 - with merit cap) I have a group of 5 fully merited characters. I need a sixth. I see a samurai. He has no merits. I pass him up and grab a samurai that has maxed merits / gear.
--end result--- 6 fully merited players

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In scenario 1, I would totally invite the first SAM I find. However, this scenario is unrealisitc because you don't know what merits other people have without asking. Maybe you do, but I don't ask everyone "what did you merit?" and then kick them or not invite them if they don't fit my vision of what someone "should" do. Also, you can be "fully merited" on SAM and not have the same merits as someone else, or be "fully merited" but merited the weapon skill for a different weapon. Unless inviting this person makes the party implode and makes the content we're going to do impossible, I'm not going to refuse them. This scenario is further unrealistic because most people don't actively seek groups for jobs they haven't "fully merited, unless they're specifically looking to merit them.

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If you like more than 3 then you are screwed.

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This is simply wroing, because many jobs can use the same weapons and thus the same weapon skills.

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I thought it was pretty clear that my statement about lack of choice was in reference to the topic at hand and not a universal hatred of all laws and rules. Of course games have to have rules. If they didn't it would just be people doing whatever they want. The football field would be full of people doing cocaine, fighting dogs and having sex...

which would be far more entertaining actually.

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The problem was you were arguing with absolutes- you didn't allow for exceptions.

It doesn't matter if jobs can use a variety of weapons, every job favors a specific weapon type to rendering the alternatives nigh unusable and a cap will always force the distribution toward a narrow subset of preferred options based on the utility function instead of personal preference (the lower the cap the stronger the effect will be).

A capped system actually hurts players who make "poor" choices (most often inexperienced players) more than it hurts players who want to cap everything because informed players will make more competitively functional decisions(even begrudgingly) and the players who went for "customization" over functionality will be left in the dust