New merit categories:

This is a thread to post creative and new merit categories, job traits, job abilities, skill cap/merit cap ideas, the sky's the limit!

My idea is this: 2 new categories, up where HP/MP ones are, 1 called Job Abilities and one called Job Traits.

It's simple, you get only 1 choice per category to start, maybe ever, depending on balance issues.

All the job abilities and traits will be there. Traits will be upgradable in potency and abilities will upgrade in recast. Some abilities and traits might have longer recasts or have weakened potency, but however it would end up, you would be able to use this one job ability and job trait on any job you choose to have it be active on at 99.

As far as the details of each one, I'll leave that up to the Dev's to decide if they felt so inclined to take this suggestion.

Thanks for your ideas and posts!

I'd make a different change to the system.

First, after hitting 99 you can talk to the Moogle by Maat to trade in 20 merit points for a single Merit Stone (which can't be sold, traded, etc.).

You'd get the following options with these:
* Decrease 2-hour recast time (5 minutes per upgrade, to 1hr minimum) - 1 Merit Stone (1, 2, 2, 3, 3...)
* Upgrade an existing trait on your main job - 1 Merit Stone (2, 3, 4...) with some at higher rates for balance reasons
* Increase subjob limitation (2% increase at a time - so 5 levels of this means your subjob is now capped at 60% of your main job level) - 1 Merit Stone (2, 3, 4...)
* Allow 5 additional merit points to be stored - 1 Merit Stone (2, 3, 4...)
* Increase caps on total Group 1/Group 2 merits (by 3) - 1 Merit Stone (2, 3, 4, 5)
* Obtain a job trait your main job doesn't have but a currently leveled job has - 2 Merit Stones (4, 6, 8...; after obtaining, can upgrade through second option)
* Obtain a job ability or spell your main job doesn't have but a currently leveled job has - 3 Merit Stones (6, 9, 12...; abilities locked from subjobs cost double, other jobs' 2-hours cost triple)
* New job traits not available to jobs otherwise - 4 Merit Stones (8, 12, 16...; after obtaining, can upgrade through second option at 2x stated rate)
* and possibly one or two others.

As far as "but what about people going XXX99/YYY99" on the subjob-cap upgrade in there: if someone's willing to grind out 65 million EXP for that, more power to them. Or it can cap at 70% or 80% instead if that gets around serious balance issues.