Request: Increase Merit "Weapon Skill" Cap from 15, to 25.

[Nightfox]

i agree. but if that is the case, i would rather them make more meritable abilites or traits, rather then quests and armor. again, i am not saying completely band meritable ws. all i am saying is make every ws attainable by a quest (one that does not involve spending merits. however make it like the wsnm quests or drops from certain nms in or outside abyssea). and then once you have this weapons skills, allow you to merit little tweaks on the ws. rather then make it completely reliant on 5/5 merits for the ws to be useful

That is a very good point Mattkoko. I wouldn't mind the initial tier of the new weapon skills to be unlocked via a quest, as long as it isn't a huge hassle. Both getting weapon skill points and possibly fighting an NM that can't be solo'd for a fragment of a WS seems tedious in my opinion. Maybe even something along the lines of a single Magian Trial, such as acquiring a special weapon from the "Splitery Chest" to use and completing a "Use this weapon skill 300 times" trial, With the respective weapon equipped of course, similar to the mythic weapons skills.

[Cursed]

SE Dev team brainstorming process:

Bob "I just noticed, we introduced Lv.99 cap but we haven't allowed HP/MP to scale."
Bill "and we kind dropped the ball on weapon skills and magic spells too"
Bob "Yeah RDM kinda useless now. we need to do something about all this"
Bill "Lets talk to the others and see what we come up with"

Hours later
Bob "So we're introducing 3 new tiers of ws's. 1 for normal weapons, 1 for relic holders, and 1 for mythic holders"
Bill "cool. we're giving RDM hastega, Slowga, Stop, Demi, Paralyga and Refreshga"
Bob "awesome!. We're gonna bring HP and MP up to be roughly 25% greater than it currently is at the moment at 99"
Bill "excellent! We fixed PLD and tanking!"
Bob "cool what did the boss say?"

He said "nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu! BARANCE!"
Bob "......."
Bill ".............................."

[Zhronne]

Thread approved by Zhronne!

[Ophannus]

Actually, the JP Community Dev Team was talking about this on the JP forums about 2 months ago. I think the reasoning behind the current cap is two fold.

1) "If they increase it from 15 to 25, people will then probably ask to increase the cap further from 25 to 30 or even to 35, where do we draw the line?"

2) The reasoning behind only being able to cap 3 is to promote specialties/customization. If everyone had many of the weapon skills unlocked there would be less diversity between players and it would become 'the norm' rather than one player 'specializing in 1-3 jobs' merit ws' with the current system, players choose their favorite or most useful weapon skills. If they wanted everybody to have all of them they wouldn't have made them meritable and they'd be unlocked naturally through skill points, which isn't the point of merits. Merit point abilities are meant to further specialize your jobs to cater to your playstyle, not make you bread&butter like everything else. i.e You can be an OAT DRG and spam Stardiver and thus max out Stardiver, or you can have Mythic and use Drakesbane and thus put the points from Stardiver into say your DRK's Resolution. Or maybe since you have Almace you don't need Requiescat, or maybe you prefer using Excalibur and KoTR so you save your points for another job's WS etc..

[scaevola]

You can be an OAT DRG and spam Stardiver and thus max out Stardiver, or you can have Mythic and use Drakesbane and thus put the points from Stardiver into say your DRK's Resolution. Or maybe since you have Almace you don't need Requiescat, or maybe you prefer using Excalibur and KoTR so you save your points for another job's WS etc..

This is fine and good in theory but falls apart pretty quickly in practice, especially when you're talking about merit WSes that are actually stronger than emp/relic alternatives, like Shoha, Ruinator, Resolution, situationally Exenterator, and so forth. Is somebody who, for instance, wants to invest enough into her SAM to make a Masamune really going to NOT take Shoha when having it is clearly a damage upgrade for that SAM, even with Masamune?

I mean, considering how many DRKs out there leapt at the chance to bleed themselves dry rushing Ragnaroks just to exclusively use Resolution, balancing merit WS access with the idea that somebody would use a weaker WS on their main jobs just to save points for something else seems awfully naive.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Er, that makes no bloody sense because even with Almace Requiescat has uses, even with Ryu stardiver still has some use (although obviously it isn't the main weaponskill to use), certain weaponskills such as ruinator/shattersoul/resolution are clearly superiour in many situations for the weapon type...

And KoTR is bad and you should feel bad for mentioning it. Requiescat is typically better with Excalibur.

[Karbuncle]

If what Ophannus said is true, and one of their reasons is that actually listening to player feedback might cause a catastrophic domino effect of them being forced to consider other player feedback, This forum is a GD farce and its insulting to even pretend they care.

Where do they draw the line? Hmm, I don't know, Where the F**K they want?. They can come in and say "We've decided to upgrade to 5, But that will be the final adjustment, We draw the line at 1/3rd", Sure, there will always be someone that asks for more, But the majority would be satisfied. Holding off an update simply because they fear of people asking for more...? I just am so upset by how childish and unprofessional something like that sounds... I can't even form a clear response.

I mean, If they came in and said "We're keeping it at 3 because we've decided this is for the best for our vision", I'd say "Well at least their being honest, and lets get serious, the last time we got something designed to be fun was probably early 2004, and everything since then has had to meet the criteria:

*Bottle-necking
*Time-Sink
*Ridiculous Drop rate to strengthen the above
*At least 2 Instances of R.N.G
*Lowest possible Reward/Effort Ratio to ensure Long Event life"

Or something equally cheeky, But I'd accept the fact their reason is basically "We've Decided on 3, For the sake of Balance"... I just can't accept the idea they'd hold off an update simply based on the assumption we might ask for more... I mean... People will always ask for more, Even if you draw the line at 3, People will continue to ask for more. Its human Nature to want more.

If they don't know this, who raised them? Its like they're saying "Hopefully if we ignore you long enough, You'll stop asking us for help and we can close these forums, Since _____ found out about them and he doesn't like it". I feel like after ruining FFXIV, Whoever came here to take out his frustration on us for being demoted off the team for a younger man who's making the game 100x Better.

Well, T his rant got a little off track didn't it?

[Trisscar]

And yet nothing you said was inherently wrong, Karby. They have Atmos, the test server where they have play testers that they are obstinately listening to, and Atmos has been open to normal players longer than logwatch has been around. I can't imagine logwatch initially gotten many positive responses (especially from the blu contingent), so it's more proof that Squaresuck doesn't listen to anyone else and does whatever the hell they want to.

Back on topic: Rather than seeing more merits able to be spent on weapon skills I'd rather them give the weapon skills more bite. The one weapon skill I use the most is Requ, which in my mind only exists to chain with Bloodrake, and even then I already have other weapon skill to chain darkness with.

But yeah, these are weapon skills. That you get at level 99. That you spend merits on. And they don't overshadow weapon skills you get without even questing them at level 60? What the fudge Squaresuck?

[Alhanelem]

This falls in the range of what I'd consider acceptable.

I personally wanted to merit Shattersoul for fun, But instead went the path of Use over fun.

shattersoul is pretty damn good and I don't regret meriting it for one second.

[Juilan]

If what Ophannus said is true, and one of their reasons is that actually listening to player feedback might cause a catastrophic domino effect of them being forced to consider other player feedback, This forum is a GD farce and its insulting to even pretend they care.

With this as justification, can we elect members of the forums as devs and give them the same total pay as the 3 north korean rice farmers they outsourced to? I will work for rice!

karb you have an ever enlightened vision for how nice things could be... id like to balance takana with some ancient greek philosophy, though i dont think he'd listen. Or maybe balance him with some of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's logic