[dev1049] suggestions.

100 merits to max a weaponskill is kind of rediculous, however if SE plans on allowing these WS's to be the most powerful WS for that weapon PERIOD, then im quite alright spending 300 merits to max out my weaponskills.

I would like to see the maximum total value for WS merits higher then 15.
Lot of people have more then one job they enjoy playing and there will be players that will want all the new weapon skills.
If you unlock all of them you will not be able to fully merit one out.

It would be nice if the cap was 25 or 30, at least then I would be able to get them all and max out two or three

300 merit points = 3.000.000 xp = 2 weeks in abyssea. For some it's a week, for others 4 weeks.

What I'd like to know is how merit upgrades affect the weaponskills.

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Originally Posted by Kristal

300 merit points = 3.000.000 xp = 2 weeks in abyssea. For some it's a week, for others 4 weeks.

What I'd like to know is how merit upgrades affect the weaponskills.

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Increases either the first or second modifier.

The numbers are indeed very low. Why only let us merit to 15? every day more and more players have more jobs leveled, and now SE seeks to limit their potential with this. Personally i would rather this be set as a job merit category, even if it means i would need to merit sword and h2h twice over, so long as i could work towards improving all my jobs that i already leveled, and skilled to cap.

The only reason others can provide behind this limiting factor, is balance, but i don't see how this balances anything. You are only able to use 1 weaponskill at a time after all. Prior the only time we have been locked out of a weapon skill or a JA is in the job merit category and lack of owning a relic/mythic/empy. Now they are extending this fairly deep as you are forced to have only 3 good WS or 4-14 weaker versions.

Really not happy with the whole limit we are being imposed here(pun intended as we all should have limit breaker key item!)

If this were to happen then they should increase the merit cap to make a lil easier for players especially those who lvl'd most of their jobs. Then again it feels off at the same time.

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Originally Posted by Kristal

300 merit points = 3.000.000 xp = 2 weeks in abyssea. For some it's a week, for others 4 weeks.

What I'd like to know is how merit upgrades affect the weaponskills.

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Each merit increases the stat modifier by 17%. So for say Shijin Spiral 5/5 Merits is a 85% Dex Modifier.

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Originally Posted by brayen

The numbers are indeed very low. Why only let us merit to 15? every day more and more players have more jobs leveled, and now SE seeks to limit their potential with this. Personally i would rather this be set as a job merit category, even if it means i would need to merit sword and h2h twice over, so long as i could work towards improving all my jobs that i already leveled, and skilled to cap.

The only reason others can provide behind this limiting factor, is balance, but i don't see how this balances anything. You are only able to use 1 weaponskill at a time after all. Prior the only time we have been locked out of a weapon skill or a JA is in the job merit category and lack of owning a relic/mythic/empy. Now they are extending this fairly deep as you are forced to have only 3 good WS or 4-14 weaker versions.

Really not happy with the whole limit we are being imposed here(pun intended as we all should have limit breaker key item!)

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I definitely agree here, weapon skills aren't the type of thing that can be considered fair to limit like this. Especially since SE has always been so adamant about adding jobs to weapon classes that no one who plays that job will ever use ever because they don't have A+~B+ skill in that weapon. Even more so because a lot of these WS seem to be utility WS, rather than the expected Super Final WS.

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Originally Posted by Lessina

Each merit increases the stat modifier by 17%. So for say Shijin Spiral 5/5 Merits is a 85% Dex Modifier.

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My gut tells me that it can't be that simple (I'm not saying what you said isn't true, I've done shijin spiral to 5/5 on the test server), the idea that each of these WS has an identical 17%/34%/51%/68%/85% stat mod is just bizarre, especially since the highest WSC I know of is 60%, and none of the other WSCs match that kind of progression. We won't know for sure though until NAs have access to the ws and/or studio gobli gets done with them.

I'm on the fence here, I mean theoretically I could Get Empys for nin, monk and Thf/dnc, and then merit my way into sam, war and blu. That give me a pretty broad selection of jobs. On the other hand, if these are not = to empy weapon skills at 5/5, then having to merit them for jobs that you already have empy/relic/mythic for would be super lame sauce.

My real issue though is that They need to make merit changes accessible in the field. Screw all this warping back and forth nonsense.

All the merit system really did was promote the cookie cutter mentality more so than specialization. If you wanted to be the best at X job, you best have Y! That kind of thing. Some might be okay with that, but I'm not really for arbitrary doors being slammed in the faces of those capable of otherwise jumping through the hoops over a reasonable period time. Even with the old merits, I doubt anyone would argue against the ability to max everything since they'd be helpful. It's just, for now, some things are just way more helpful than others. This situation basically risks repeating itself as we find out more about the WS, nevermind the limited situations where a WHM, RDM, SMN, BLM, SCH, or BRD would find themselves in a position to use a WS, thus making investing in their respective skills less appealing even if they are improvements to older options.

As I noted in the general board, I'd rather see all WS capable of being unlocked and maxed at 10 > 20 > 30 > 30 > 30 point spread. That's 120 merit points per WS, at the very least 4 trips to town with a 30 cap on merits. 1680 merits if someone wanted them all. That's a hell of a lot of time for casual players who may be lucky to see an Abyssea party breaking 7 merits an hour. On the other hand, they'd still have the option to focus on their primary jobs while more versatile players with more time on their hands can have their own productive time sinks. Otherwise, people will be sitting on capped merits again pretty soon.

If you're concerned about accessibility and flexibility vis a vis the new weapon skills, I would be much more worried about the difficulty of Atori-Tutori than the merit cap.

I posted this in the New weapon skills thread, but since this place seems more relevant for it, here goes:

One of the worst mistakes SE has ever pulled (even the dev team is human) is making job abilities and spells that are unlocked with merits. Yes, having effects improved by merits may have great potential, but it was always a bad idea to have the base version unlocked by merits when that means that players have to choose between being able to perform each one with mediocrity or being able to perform one or two the way they were made to be used.

While I could explain the things that were wrong with the merit system at length, it basically boils down to a few basic points. This is a very different MMO from others. Part of this is because we have a job system that allows people to do everything with one job given enough time and effort. This is very unlike many other MMOs where you are locked to your class from day one, and have to get a new character in order to perform a different role. The uniqueness and intelligent design of the jobs system in FFXI should not be beaten on its face any more then it already has.

While the "Other" category merits were a nice boost to characters, and stat boosts (STR/DEX/VIT/AGI/INT/MND/CHR/MP/HP) are acceptable and even neat like race selections were, and even Skill Boosts are still in the range of okay, the individual class merits at times pushed past this boundary. Still, class choices were at least restricted to classes, so at least if you liked to play as a more offensive version of one class and a more defensive version of another, you could tailor to this.

Basically, bringing merits into this to compare is wrong, because previous merit categories have been widely different - even when they strongly enforced differing play styles, they were at least limited to their individual jobs.

When it comes to Weapon Skills, few people if any really want to sacrifice the potential they should be at in order to be able to use them all. And I'm sure the dev team worked and toiled very hard on each and every animation... which makes me wonder - why would they deliberately decide to implement a system that encourages players to never use 11 of the 14 animations that they designed? This would be like making players decide between being able to go to Sea or Sky exclusively, unless they payed a non-refundable deposit of one million experience points!

Further, this especially punishes niche weapon skills and weapons, especially on unpopular jobs. You basically have to start choosing between weapons altogether, rather then letting the situation let you choose your job then your weapon. Like to solo on one class that is widely different from the ones you party with? Too bad because you can't get the WS you want without being gimp in parties!

All of this is a terrible price to pay for an artificial limitation on being able to enjoy all of the new content to its fullest. Players will already be paying one million merit points per weapon skill, which while this may be a fair price, is a steep one. But it is not as steep as the price of gimping your ability to get into parties and events with jobs you've leveled and geared just because you couldn't justify making that job's weapon skill your third weapon skill over another.

Basically, I see no reason to cap out this particular merit category. But I know that sometimes the dev team is stubborn about certain things, so I'll just list a few ideas that would be better then the current plans for this. This list goes in order of the best option to the worst. Hopefully SE finds at least one of these better then the extremely limiting limit they have now.

• No point limits - the players earned their merit points, let them spend them!
• Increased point costs for increased point limits - having more then three weapon skills capped will cost progressively more to do then the first choices.
• Individual choices per job - each job has to unlock the weapon skills individually, but each job can unlock up to three.
• Twenty Point limit, with the first point in any category not counting towards maximum allocation.
• Thirty-four point limit - have an uneven amount that makes it clear that the intent is that players unlock all weapon skills and cap out five.

Basically, I really hope SE at least implements a higher cap, or even caps for each job, but my ideal (aside from no limits) would to be to have an excessively high cost to merit more and more of them - basically you have to pay merits for more maximum allocation points, and getting the ability to get all of the weapon skills costs something like ten times the amount it did to get the first three. Or something like that.

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Originally Posted by scaevola

If you're concerned about accessibility and flexibility vis a vis the new weapon skills, I would be much more worried about the difficulty of Atori-Tutori than the merit cap.

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Any possible hassle of a one-time fight still lacking good details and tactics is nothing compared to issues reflected through the WS implementation. Heck, I imagine people would be okay with having to do the fight for each WS as long as they could them and not have them suck.

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No point limits - the players earned their merit points, let them spend them!
Increased point costs for increased point limits - having more then three weapon skills capped will cost progressively more to do then the first choices.
Individual choices per job - each job has to unlock the weapon skills individually, but each job can unlock up to three.

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Any of these would be awesome. The more I think about it, the less I like this whole system they have for these WS.

The only reason I could think of to put less than 5 merits in a chosen WS, is if it was only needed to proc.

If that is the case, then this is the worst system ever.

If not, then This still sucks real bad.

i agree, any of those suggestions would be great. or just straight out raising limit of 15 at the very least double that.

The point is this limit is very silly to bestow on players, they leveled the job and skilled up and are willing to spend merits for it, so why are we going to limit them to weaponskills of skill lv 300 and below? this game has always promoted letting you play different classes to their fullest why the change now so late in the game?

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Originally Posted by Theytak

I definitely agree here, weapon skills aren't the type of thing that can be considered fair to limit like this. Especially since SE has always been so adamant about adding jobs to weapon classes that no one who plays that job will ever use ever because they don't have A+~B+ skill in that weapon. Even more so because a lot of these WS seem to be utility WS, rather than the expected Super Final WS.



My gut tells me that it can't be that simple (I'm not saying what you said isn't true, I've done shijin spiral to 5/5 on the test server), the idea that each of these WS has an identical 17%/34%/51%/68%/85% stat mod is just bizarre, especially since the highest WSC I know of is 60%, and none of the other WSCs match that kind of progression. We won't know for sure though until NAs have access to the ws and/or studio gobli gets done with them.

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So far tests have shown that SE's description seems to be wrong and it's 20%|40%|60%|80%|100% for Last Stand, so that's likely how they all are.

Keep in mind it is the test server. so while the description might be wrong it could be for test purposes on SE's part.

99 cap is the final cap, so the fight has to be special and impressive.

As for the new ws, the fact that a fully merited new ws can compete with relic/mythic/empyrean is exactly why they are only allowing 3 fully merited ws, because if you could fully merit all of them it would be more messed up than it already is to players with empyreans/woe/mythic/relic. If more ws were allowed to be fully capped, then the power of these new ws would have to be nerfed, is that what you would want?

This isn't magic, it's math. If they wanted they could make these WS perform 10% below Relic/magian/mythic across the board, and let you merit them all. That way they would not piss off the relic etc. holders, and still be able to give most weapons a really good WS. They don't have to add a negative spin for every cool thing they add. they just do that to torture you. For some reason SE hates the fan base, and thinks they have to teach us a lesson about "be careful what you wish for" every single time they add something. I personally think it is the work of some crotchety old Coder in the SE basement that gets pissed every time he is asked to add some new thing, so he puts some horrible flaw in every time, and tells the devs that he had do it "to maintain the balances and stuff".

I've actually been trying the excuse out at work myself. IE.

<random stooge in my office> says "hey, why is it that you ordered everyone in the office dual 22" 1080p monitors, and I only get a single 19 inch CRT?".

<I reply> "I had to, to maintain the balance. See... everyone else worked really hard, and they feel like you seeing as well as them is unfair. If you trade out that wireless mouse for an old shitty track ball mouse, I could give you another 19" CRT though.".

Incidentally, people have stopped asking me for a lot of crap at work.

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Originally Posted by Concerned4FFxi

99 cap is the final cap, so the fight has to be special and impressive.

As for the new ws, the fact that a fully merited new ws can compete with relic/mythic/empyrean is exactly why they are only allowing 3 fully merited ws, because if you could fully merit all of them it would be more messed up than it already is to players with empyreans/woe/mythic/relic. If more ws were allowed to be fully capped, then the power of these new ws would have to be nerfed, is that what you would want?

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That is a terrible reasoning. you are saying then that the only way to keep all your desired jobs at respectable performance is to merit 3 WS and for any other job that does not share a weapon, they HAVE to do mythic relic or empy? that is rather asinine form a development stand point. The simple fact is, players have multiple jobs, they skilled them up and leveled them, and you are saying the last WS you are given is going to end at lv 80?(skill 300) and most cases then not will be stuck using even lower lvl weaponskills. In fact most of the new WS are still falling short against most relic/mythic/empy counterparts so really that is a bad example as a whole. being able to merit them all would mean nothing short of someone who is willing to work towards them all. Was it messed up you can unlock all mythic WS? i saw no one complaining back them.

I don't see why relic WS holders would have anything to be pissed about, maybe Emp/Mythic, but they got screwed on WSs to begin with. I mean, relic have perma hidden effect, so even if they don't use relic WS, they still have one of the best weapons in the game for that category. And it's not like merit WS give an Aftermath either. If you look at a weapon like Masamune, Fudo isn't that great to begin with, half the time you just Fudo for Aftermath then follow with Gekkos on anything tougher than an XP mob. So either I'll switch Gekko to merit WS or I'll just drop Masa entirely for a 4 hit with Kikugosaku. Given how easy it is for SAM to get TP though it's honestly better for Masamune SAMs that the get a decent WS to use instead of Fudo. It's worse for emps with good WS like Vere, but again you can open with Smite and use Shijin for the duration of your aftermath. Mythics are in the same boat. And again they still have one of the best weapons for their respective jobs, they just get a better WS. Plus Emps and Relics can SC double light or dark for extra dmg, where as merit WS only gonna have Lvl 2 properties.

I think the biggest problem, the one that keeps coming up, is the cap is just too low. Personally, I think unlocking the merit WS category should unlock all WS given you have the skill to use them, then everyone can try them out. From there you can cap out X many WS or spread points around as desired. I think you should be able to cap at least 4 WS since you can cap merits out for 4 weapons. If SE wants you to specialize in certain weapons, you should at least be able to cap WSs for the weapons you merit.

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All the merit system really did was promote the cookie cutter mentality more so than specialization.

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No it is the opposite. If you already had cookie cutter mentality, you had no options for merits. I've always merited the things I want to use over the things that everyone thinks should be used. I play for fun after all, and not to be best.

Personally I think this game needs more freedom with merits. I want to put all 15 in staff. Why can't I do that? Why should I have leftover merits just because I do not want to play all jobs? The game should be designed for people with different minds, not just assume everyone thinks exactly the same (unless you want to make a cookie cutter game)

Agreed!! No one wants to have the same of everything and at 99 we should be able to slightly customized our character's jobs and stats. I understand balance is an issue but it does not seem a bigger issue than they previously dreaded about. The game is all about grind, end of story, which is fine, just make the grinding process fun, and at least, please take a look at abyssea - the greatest and best thing they ever did to this game ever (beside ToAU) and made the whole thing fun with enough carrots and rewards to dangle every little step of the way. Please focus on the positive and aim for casual players, more people playing the game and enjoy the fun easy content = more money = more longetivity!!

If you can adjust the Nyzul, Assaults, Salvage, Einherjar, Pankration, Moblin Maze, Limbus and Walk of Echoes - put more various item rewards and get rid of time restriction. These are fun casual activities that are neglected at the current state. Rejuvenate them so that they can be more appealing. A lot of the ToAU content reminds me of Phantasy Star Online and Monster Hunter, another great online game that is very addictive.

I CAN BELIEVABLE!

@Malamasala
Are you implying playing well cant equate to having fun? if so thanks for trying to speak for everyone but no, plenty of people enjoy performing well. merits severely lack in worth-wild options to warrant them adding any specialization. Last i checked no1 merits defender for example. As SE has already mentioned they are planning to do an overhaul on the system tho so its pointless to talk about this off-topic.

@Luvbunny
Completely off-topic i think lol. If you have checked the upcoming updates they are in fact planning to update most of those events you have mentioned but again completely off-topic.