Please raise the combat and weaopn skill max merits

I would like to merit more skills so I can play a variety of jobs. I would love to merit new weapons like GS for Run and have more then 3 merit weapon skills since you have to cap them at 5 to make them worthwhile.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...rom-15-to-25.?

Older, But needless to say. +'s everywhere

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Originally Posted by Zumi

I would like to merit more skills so I can play a variety of jobs. I would love to merit new weapons like GS for Run and have more then 3 merit weapon skills since you have to cap them at 5 to make them worthwhile.

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You can play a variety of jobs. The merit points or lack thereof do not make a job inviable (not that they don't help of course, but the way you write your post, you're saying it's impossible to play a job unless you have 8/8 merits in a weapon). I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but the premise of your argument is somewhat fallacious.

For the weapon skills specifically, they have already planned adjustments so that you do not need 5/5 for the weapon skill to be useful. Not exactly what we all had our hearts set on, but it does help.

Losing 20% WSC will hurt a lot of these WSs more than most people seem to realize. Originally I thought "hey, this is a pretty good change", but then I realized that it really isn't. Especially with recent developments in terms of weaponry, having 5/5 into a weaponskill will be necessary to play a job to its fullest, and it isn't very easy to choose between them.

For example, say I want to play BLU, SAM, and RUN.

-Tachi: Shoha is obviously a requirement
-Ruinator and Resolution are both required to play RUN to its fullest; you'll not very often have the attack to back up Resolution
-Requiescat will be a necessity for any BLU who does not 99 their Almace, and possibly will be even after that


That's just three jobs. Out of 22. Three out of twenty two. It's an unnecessary limitation. If I want to put in the hundreds upon hundreds of merits to unlock most of these weaponskills, I should be able to... "job merit diversity" isn't a very good model to balance things by in a game with twenty two classes, especially when the items in question are so integral to optimal operation of their respective classes.

I thought it was going from losing 20% to more like 12%, still a shitty deal anyways since its still not what we asked for...

iirc, it's going from 85 to 65 post-alpha if you demerit from 5/5 to 1/5.

Well so we can be sure, here is the original post.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Merit Point Weapon Skills

This is a topic we have seen in threads asking to increase the cap on the merit point weapon skill category.
Instead of adjusting the cap value, we are currently looking into adjusting the modifier values so that these weapon skills can be used with a single merit point.

We are envisioning to make it so 1 merit point will yield a 65% status modifier, and each point afterwards will grant an addition 5% for a maximum of 85% (no changes to the max value).

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We can have all of them and they will be much weaker or we can have almost 3 at 4/5 which is not horrible, but still not full powered, again, still not what we asked for, then again its never what we ask for.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

You can play a variety of jobs. The merit points or lack thereof do not make a job inviable (not that they don't help of course, but the way you write your post, you're saying it's impossible to play a job unless you have 8/8 merits in a weapon). I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but the premise of your argument is somewhat fallacious.

For the weapon skills specifically, they have already planned adjustments so that you do not need 5/5 for the weapon skill to be useful. Not exactly what we all had our hearts set on, but it does help.

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I only play jobs that are maxed correctly to allow the highest performance. Certain jobs can get away with not having the merit WS if you have the empyrean weapon monk for example if you use VS as your main WS you don't need SS. However empyrean WS is pretty much required if you have a relic for that job otherwise you won't do any damage.

I will usually parse 25-45% of the total damage depending on the other people in VW pick ups that is because I actually try to min max everything.

For me I would not play a melee job that doesn't have 8/8 combat merits and acceptable WS, I wouldn't want to under perform.

The weapon skill change doesn't do anything that we asked for its mostly useless.

Current
1 Merit gets 17% mod each merit add 17% more to the modifier for a total of 85%

Next Patch
1 Merit gets 65% mod each merit after adds 5% more to the modifier for a total of 85%

Nobody who is serious at all about min maxing their damage dealer jobs is going to with a bunch of gimped merit WS over 3 maxed ones. Nothing will really change. When the update comes out, very few people will be like, I should demerit 1 of my WS so I can get a few gimped ones on other jobs.

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I only play jobs that are maxed correctly to allow the highest performance.

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There's a difference between stating the jobs are unplayable without the merits and stating that you, being an elitist professional, demand the maximally highest peak performance.

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Nobody who is serious at all about min maxing their damage dealer jobs is going to with a bunch of gimped merit WS over 3 maxed ones.

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Obviously it won't meant your exacting perfectionist standards, but with the coming adjustments, there will be drastically less difference between 5/5 and ~3/5.

Not everyone is a min-maxer. Min-maxing is not at all necessary to "win" the game. Just because something isn't personally good enough for you, doesn't mean it won't work acceptably for anyone else.

All 22 jobs are completely playable without having all of the merit weapon skills with an 85% modifier.

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For me I would not play a melee job that doesn't have 8/8 combat merits and acceptable WS, I wouldn't want to under perform.

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You wouldn't underperform. the difference between 8/8 and 8/8 otherwise capped on your jobs' strongest weapon's skill is minimal at best. For the rest of us who aren't super perfectionists, you can't really tell at all.

I'm not saying this is the most ideal adjustment, but I feel like it helps. Obviously they want to preserve the character customization aspect of the merit system (why it was invented in the first place). SE doesn't want you to be able to be the absolute best at everything, obviously.

^^

I shouldn't have to bench a bunch of my melee jobs that use to be playable. Which I pretty much have to do now. Damage dealer jobs preform a similar role do damage it just wouldn't be good for me to play a job that does much less damage because I want to do something different. I liked playing my Sam, ranger, scythe on drk are all are all benched because I don't have the merit WS to do actual good damage on those jobs.

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I shouldn't have to bench a bunch of my melee jobs that use to be playable.

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You don't. They were playable before, they're playable now, and they will be more playable with this patch.

Some weapon skills, such as Shattersoul, are the best in their class but still are not necessary for maximum performance on a job. These jobs are totally 100% playable no matter how much of a perfectionist you are. Then there are jobs like WAR which have several weapons to choose from. You don't need every single merit WS for that one job for it to be fully playable- The merit WS are not used for VW proc so they're not necessary for that, in particular.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

You don't. They were playable before, they're playable now, and they will be more playable with this patch.

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If you play alone all the time? Sure.

But if you wanna participate in Events, Not having Tachi:Shoha or Resolution could mean have fun not coming DRK or SAM. sh*ts a reality.

SHHH!!!! PETA's coming, they said something about "as angry as we are about beating live horses we are REALLY pissed people are keeping it up on dead ones!"

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

If you play alone all the time? Sure.

But if you wanna participate in Events, Not having Tachi:Shoha or Resolution could mean have fun not coming DRK or SAM. sh*ts a reality.

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I "wanna" and do participate in events. I don't have Tachi:Shoha or Resolution. Content is completely beatable without having these things, and if someone won't invite you, then just start one yourself.

Ah, another thread to restate my position that limits to what you can merit are pointless and anyone willing to put in the time should be able to maximize their characters however they see fit.

That is all.

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Originally Posted by Shadax

Ah, another thread to restate my position that limits to what you can merit are pointless and anyone willing to put in the time should be able to maximize their characters however they see fit.

That is all.

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Limits to anything else in the game are also therefore pointless and anyone should be able to maximize their anything however they want.

Limits exist for design reasons. The merit system was designed to specialize you're character, not merely boost its stats. They require you to make decisions such that each person's character is unique in some way from another- An otherwise difficult thing to do in a game where you can play every class. I really hate the GIMME EVERYTHING! mentality.

I want 9999 HP, MP, 999 in all stats all the time, not just with a primeval brew. Make it happen, SE. Unlimited everything {yes please}.

As it stands, with your suggestion, the only way to spec your character would be to intentionally choose not to do something.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

I "wanna" and do participate in events. I don't have Tachi:Shoha or Resolution. Content is completely beatable without having these things, and if someone won't invite you, then just start one yourself.

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You know, just because you don't experience something doesn't mean its not an issue right?

I mean, you do know that? And surprisingly, sometimes its not as easy as "Start your own", Some people might not be on the right VW FIght, and its hard to find help for climbs these days.. You'd have to bank on someone being okay to pop it for you. Which also raises complications if you want to use Displacers, like for Botulus Rex.. cause Pick up people... etc :\

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Some people might not be on the right VW FIght,

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The help those some people out? I got through most content by starting my own parties for it. There are plenty of people out there who need a various VW fights if you look for them. I know several people who have not completed a lot of voidwatch because they don't have the most popular jobs and don't have maxed out merits and the best everything. I make it a point to help these people, and usually we do just fine.

Some elitists can't even believe the fact that you can beat content with less than what they have. At least this game has a decent number of Haves who understand the have-nots.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

If I can do something and it doesn't bother me then everyone else should be required to do it the same way.

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Dear alhan,
You are wrong. There is no need to argue. No need to share your experiences. No need to tell us why you think you are right. This horse has been beaten enough. You are just wrong. That is all.

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Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

Dear alhan,
You are wrong. There is no need to argue. No need to share your experiences. No need to tell us why you think you are right. This horse has been beaten enough. You are just wrong. That is all.

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I'm sorry, but you declaring somebody wrong does not make them wrong. I do not recognize you as an authority which can dictate this. Having a minority opinion doesn't make me "wrong" either (nor does it make me "right."). It's called an opinion for a reason.

You're also missing the whole point- the point of this is to be different, not the same. I don't want everyone to do things the same way I do.

However, "limits", which everyone seems to hate, need to exist. They facilitate good game design. FFXI is not really a sandbox like a game such as Minecraft is. I understand some people don't like limits, and in an offline game you can use a game genie /action replay / whatever to remove those limits. However, in an online game, those limits need to exist. They give meaning to your decisions and generally imrpvove immersion, gameplay or the overall experience in some way. If everyone is allowed to have all of everything, it essentially removes all customization from the game.

That being said, I recognize most people want to get as much as they want when they want how they want it. I understand that i don't hold the most popular opinion. That doesn't make it wrong. And with that said, I will exit.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

I'm sorry, but you declaring somebody wrong does not make them wrong.

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But being wrong makes you wrong. Anlehlnem, I know for the most part your intentions aren't always bad, But 9/10 I just see you playing, essentially, the devils advocate. In most cases you do not think something is needed simply because it will not effect you or you have not experienced the negative effects of it.

As a side note, I've helped more than ~40-50 People get Access to Provenance, But I'm also not the server babysitter nor can i solo the entire thing, So me helping isn't going to get them there, and the rest of the server is not so generous. I mean, I half jokingly asked if you know just because you don't experience something, doesn't mean it doesn't happen... and in the next response you pretty much just flat out say "I can pop them so i don't see how this is an issue". I mean, I kinda... You just kinda won it for me.

Don't worry about taking your exit, If you want to respond to this, you can... I'll try to explain why raising the cap is better than changing the whole darn thing.

1) Its easier to Raise the Merit limit to 25, rather then reprogram all ~14 Weaponskills with 4 new Merit Tiers (65/70/75/80 respectively), and adjust merit values for each.

2) If their goal is to let people access more WS, then raising the cap accomplishes this and also allows the players who want to garner the full potential of their Ws's have it.

3) Putting 3/5 into a merit means you're losing roughly 10% DMG on the WS, which is significantly more than most single pieces of armor can provide. so, even for the casual crowd, thats losing a lot of potential. I can't think of a WS I'd like to ditch 10% Potency on... If i ditched 10% of Exent's potency, Evisc or Mercy will likely start to pull ahead... If i Ditch 10% in Resolution, I'm just insane... Shattersoul? I could lose 10%, But then I'd only have 2 merits and a 15% Nerfed WS wouldn't be worth the investment... Except maybe Realmrazer only because every other club WS in comparison sucks (Minue WHM only ones).

4) Its the most popular and well-agreed upon idea across the forums, Raising Cap from 15 to 25, allows 5 Fully merited WS, only ~1/3rd of Total available. Its a great compromise and middle ground without the need to sacrifice in output potential.

There's a lot of reasons this compromise would work a lot better than what they came up with... I understand they want to make these WS's exclusive, and i respect that, making them less Exclusive is all we want, and allowing us slightly less gimp WS's isn't going to change anyones Merit set ups (Maybe a handful of folks)

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Don't worry about taking your exit, If you want to respond to this, you can... I'll try to explain why raising the cap is better than changing the whole darn thing.

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Fine.

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But being wrong makes you wrong.

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I'm not being wrong though. You're simply telling me I'm wrong- that doesn't make it so. repeating it in different words doesn't make it true. You are asserting that I am wrong about something, but you give no explanation other than "you are wrong."

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4) Its the most popular and well-agreed upon idea across the forums, Raising Cap from 15 to 25, allows 5 Fully merited WS, only ~1/3rd of Total available. Its a great compromise and middle ground without the need to sacrifice in output potential.

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As I mentioned in the other thread (don't know why we basically have two nearly identical conversations going side by side) I'm not opposed to an increase in the cap. I'm only opposed to removing it entirely. With two new jobs that most people most likely didn't factor in to their decision of which WS to get, It's not unreasonable to ask to be able to level up another one or two.

The whole reason this conversation came about is that SE is implementing a solution to alleviate an issue players have. Honestly, I think it does do that job. I'm not opposed to a cap increase (not removal) at all. I just don't understand the outrage at SE's solution.

Your theory of creating originality and diversity by not letting people do things they ant to do is completely broken. I simply stated that you were wrong because I know that no one wants to read 20 pages of you trying to explain how not having a choice is a good thing. It's not. You are wrong. It's not a matter of opinion. It's a fact. Games are created to bring the user enjoyment. This lack of choice almost universally does the opposite. It contradicts the purpose of the game and is therefor wrong. As are you.

I'll leave you with this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usfGA6I1HOs

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I simply stated that you were wrong because I know that no one wants to read 20 pages of you trying to explain how not having a choice is a good thing.

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You do have a choice. These limits require you to make choices. You can't be the best at everything. Why can't people accept that the game wasn't designed to allow you to be the best at everything. Allowing you to play everything != allowing you to be the best at everything.

FFXI is not a sandbox game or a god game, therefore the limits make sense and are reasonable to have in place. Limits and restrictions do not innately make a game unfun.

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This lack of choice almost universally does the opposite

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There isn't a lack of choice. Limits create choices, not take them away. "Hmm, well, I can have three weapon skills. Do I get this one and that one and the other one? or do I get that one, this one and this one?" Those are choices. If there are no limits, the choices become meaningless because why choose when you can just pick everything?

Should they have the offsides rule in football? the icing rule in hockey? these are limits that control how the game is played. Are these sports less fun and entertaining because they have rules? Limits exist for a reason. Removing them is not good game design.

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It contradicts the purpose of the game and is therefor wrong. As are you.

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Your logic is flawed. Limits do not innately contradict the purpose of the game, and is not therefore wrong, nor am I.

@Al

I understand where you are coming from, I really do. And FFXI as originally designed all your points were dead on, but: They doubled regular XP, added level sync, added pages, added XP rings, added leech play aka Aby, eased relics, eased Empy, added VW (force pop), admittedly completely burned Nyzul, salvage, sea, sky and HNMs into meaninglessness, added adventuring fellows and the like. The days of players-even casuals like myself-playing only 1-2 jobs are GONE. SE did this to themselves when they made it possible to go 1-99 in under a week, and pretty much just mailing it in to do so.

So, the request for expanded merits-especially when a casual like myself is playing 9 level 99 jobs-isn't out of the question, it actually makes sense. I don't even specialize in 2 jobs anymore, but 6. For players more dedicated than myself that number is no doubt higher. And so the bitch is that even though players have developed a high standard to their play there is an artificial limit to how good they can be. Example, I love my new rune, I really do, but all my merits are dumpped into buffs for H2H, dagger and axe (with a few in songs skills), I just don't have the ability to make a top flight rune without trashing the high level for my bst, brd, pup, dnc or thf. I'm sorry, I just can't see that as a good thing. My LS uses me as a utility player, I fill whatever hole we have in party builds (so the back-burner status of rdm is even more tragic), but by this philosophy of low merit limits I'm asked to be less efective in those roles, even though I have the skills to do it right.

So I'm sorry, but I gotta side with the people complaining/requesting here, even though as I said in an earlier post we are "beating a dead horse", since this has been asked multiple times and we got the generic "no, balance issues" reply.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

You do have a choice. These limits require you to make choices. You can't be the best at everything. Why can't people accept that the game wasn't designed to allow you to be the best at everything. Allowing you to play everything != allowing you to be the best at everything.

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See, this is what I mean. Your arguments are nonsense. Meriting a weapon skill does not make you the best at anything. You have to do millions of nm fights and build the best gear sets while simultaneously perfecting your game play to be the best. Meriting a weapon skill just means that you are not artificially gimped by an arbitrary limitation. Get it through your head. Right now you have three weapon-skills fully merited no doubt and I promise you that you are not the best at any of the jobs that can use them and no amount of merit points is going to change that.

EDIT: and to be clear, that was not a stab at your skills. I'm simply pointing out that there will always be someone who has different gear than you and / or is better regardless of your merits.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

FFXI is not a sandbox game or a god game, therefore the limits make sense and are reasonable to have in place. Limits and restrictions do not innately make a game unfun.

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No. Limits which inhibit game play and frustrate the player do though, which is exactly what I said.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

There isn't a lack of choice. Limits create choices, not take them away.

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No. They don't create choices. They necessitate them. There is a difference. Not meriting a weapon skill is a choice. Not being able to merit a weapon skill is a limitation. Learn it. understand it. live it.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Should they have the offsides rule in football? the icing rule in hockey? these are limits that control how the game is played. Are these sports less fun and entertaining because they have rules? Limits exist for a reason. Removing them is not good game design.

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Those rules do not facilitate nor exclude choice and are therefor irrelevant to the conversation. Try harder.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Your logic is flawed. Limits do not innately contradict the purpose of the game, and is not therefore wrong, nor am I.

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This limit does and you are wrong.

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See, this is what I mean. Your arguments are nonsense.

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There is nothing nonsensical about my arguments. You'll have to explain exactly what doesn't make sense to you, then I'll be happy to elaborate on it so that it does make sense to you.

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Meriting a weapon skill does not make you the best at anything.

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

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No. They don't create choices. They necessitate them. There is a difference.

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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.

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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Those rules do not facilitate nor exclude choice and are therefor irrelevant to the conversation. Try harder.

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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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This limit does and you are wrong.

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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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Originally Posted by Glamdring

@Al

I understand where you are coming from, I really do. And FFXI as originally designed all your points were dead on, but: They doubled regular XP, added level sync, added pages, added XP rings, added leech play aka Aby, eased relics, eased Empy, added VW (force pop), admittedly completely burned Nyzul, salvage, sea, sky and HNMs into meaninglessness, added adventuring fellows and the like. The days of players-even casuals like myself-playing only 1-2 jobs are GONE. SE did this to themselves when they made it possible to go 1-99 in under a week, and pretty much just mailing it in to do so.

So, the request for expanded merits-especially when a casual like myself is playing 9 level 99 jobs-isn't out of the question, it actually makes sense. I don't even specialize in 2 jobs anymore, but 6. For players more dedicated than myself that number is no doubt higher. And so the bitch is that even though players have developed a high standard to their play there is an artificial limit to how good they can be. Example, I love my new rune, I really do, but all my merits are dumpped into buffs for H2H, dagger and axe (with a few in songs skills), I just don't have the ability to make a top flight rune without trashing the high level for my bst, brd, pup, dnc or thf. I'm sorry, I just can't see that as a good thing. My LS uses me as a utility player, I fill whatever hole we have in party builds (so the back-burner status of rdm is even more tragic), but by this philosophy of low merit limits I'm asked to be less efective in those roles, even though I have the skills to do it right.

So I'm sorry, but I gotta side with the people complaining/requesting here, even though as I said in an earlier post we are "beating a dead horse", since this has been asked multiple times and we got the generic "no, balance issues" reply.

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Now here is a post that makes sense. While I respectfully disagree, Glam, I understand your perspective. You're able to make your point without being immature and just spurting out things like "You're wrong."

There was plenty of reason and logic to my post about this subject.

4000 Posts ago when it was first brought up and i made a thread about it which i posted here, in this thread, on page one, as the second response.

You repeat something 4000 times and you're eventually going to go into Caveman speak because you assume its just not getting through >_>

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

you assume its just not getting through >_>

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I know it's not getting through, I don't have to assume. It's not getting through by choice to disagree, not because it's "wrong."

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There was plenty of reason and logic to my post about this subject.

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There is plenty of reason and logic to my post about the subject as well. You're totally free to disagree with it as it's an opinion. You simply can't call it "wrong," because it's not an assertion of fact in the first place- it's an opinion.

Personally, I think the most reasonable solution to the "problem" is to do away with merits being lost when changed, and allow you to pay a fee or something to unlearn all your merits and respend them as you see fit ("respecing"), in your mog house. This preserves having to make choices while allowing you to undo those choices without having to go through hours of work.

However, I accept that a lot of people disagree with limits because nobody likes to have the game (or a person for that matter) say "No." I accept that my opinion will probably never be popular because everybody wants more more more and assumes that more must be better in every way.

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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