[byr1001] Uncapping the Merit Point Categories

[Yinnyth]

Here's an idea for all the snow flakes: capped mogslip storage capacity, each slip can only hold up to 5 full sets, must be of the same kind that way you have to pick and choose which 5 jobs you want to have empy gear, oh oh and then we can cap exp totals so that you can only level 3 jobs to 99 and the rest to 50 so you have to choose which 3 jobs you want to be max level that way every one is extra special.

Here's an idea for all the communists: remove all the jobs from the game. Everyone would become a mime instead. Mimes would have access to all the job traits, abilities, spells, HP, MP, attributes, skills, equipment, and merits, but you have to grind exp for 7 years to get all of it.

Yes, I know I'm glazing over the actual idea of what the OP is trying to accomplish by taking it to the extreme, and that's not how a person should look at the original suggestion. The original suggestion has been well thought out, and many people agree with the points raised. To a certain extent, I also agree. However, I would still rather have the merit system fixed and made into what it's supposed to be instead of watch it become a simple extension of leveling. I also believe it would affect game balance and job balance substantially more than its supporters believe.

[Byrth]

Well, this thread is now 4 pages long and the OP has received 167 Likes, so I read the responses and edited it slightly to include a common request (higher storage cap) and deleted point B6 because it was petty. This seems to be an idea that resonated with a lot of players, especially considering the pretty incredible ratio of likes to posts in the thread.

Looking over the thread, I'd say that the most popular reason for uncapping is B4 and the most common counterpoint to raised issues are the explanation in A and B1. I haven't read any posts that don't have a counterpoint already contained in the OP.



Let me briefly go over how I see the uncapped merit system working in practice for myself, at least.

First, I care primarily about two jobs at the moment, Dancer and Warrior. Were the system totally uncapped, I would merit things in approximately the following order:
(1) Warcry Recast, Aggressor Recast, Warrior's Charge, Fan Dance, and Closed Position - 96 merits
(2) CHR, AGI, and VIT - 387 merits
(3) Spell Interruption Rate, Upheaval, useful merits for other jobs (like INT, etc.)
(4) All the rest of the merits

The only merits that provide a measurable boost to my performance in some situations are the number (1) Merits. Number (2) merits might improve my performance in some situations, but honestly not very much. Number (3) merits are more for novelty. I would only actively acquire the first 96 merits because intentionally gaining XP past that is a waste of time given my interests. That said, I would expect to continue acquiring these merits because many events yield XP, sometimes I'm bored and want something productive to do (like Campaign), etc.

So in practice you'll note that the specialization argument (like this or this or this) doesn't really work. I am not going to run out and merit all of my jobs absolutely to the cap, because I don't care about my other jobs. If I could choose between capping Charisma for Waltz and meriting my Ranger at all, I'd cap Charisma and leave my RNG meritless. Uncapping the system leads to more specialization, not less. My RNG only has merits because I couldn't spend them on something I care about and I earned them anyway doing Abyssea and Voidwatch. Also, guess what? It has the same merits as every other Ranger.


When I made the OP, I was using my BLM, SMN, BST, THF, DNC, and WAR regularly. Lately I've been using SCH, DNC, THF, and WAR. I dropped my Axe merits (99 Double Attack Axe is sad Q.Q) in favor of GS Skill and Ruinator for Resolution when I got Ragnarok to 99, and as a result I retired my Beastmaster. Similarly, I dropped my Elemental and Summoning merits so I could merit Enhancing and Dark Magic for Scholar. As a result (and also because of inventory), I retired my BLM and SMN.

I now have 15 level 99 jobs, all of which have capped Tier 1 and Tier 2 merits and 8 of which are geared well, but only 4 of which I use at least partially due to merit limitations. Uncapping the merit levels would not necessarily reduce specialization, but it would let me spend 121 merits so I can use my Beastmaster again without shame. I hate exclusively using Galeon as a proc Axe on WAR.

[Doombringer]

argument still feels strong, would like again.

[MarkovChain]

I have a simple suggestion that would help the game, would not be difficult to implement, and would not cause any serious balance issues.

Remove all the merit point category caps.
Please let us hold more merits as well ; ;

(Category Caps are the limits on a group of merits. So the category cap for Tier 1 merits is 10. The category cap for Combat Skills is 30, etc.)


A. Will this cause balance issues?
No, because:
1) The strongest players pick one of their jobs and merit for it.
2) If they are perfectly merited for one job, it presents the biggest balance threat when given more merits because you have to assume that they would be on that job in situations that require high performance, the hardest events.
3) If they are perfectly merited for one job, any future merits that they obtain from having the cap increased will necessarily be less valuable to their job than the ones they already have.
4) Optimally-merited jobs barely benefit from increasing the caps.

Example:
Warrior is in some ways the greatest threat for this kind of adjustment because they are so versatile, so the limitation on combat skills/stats stands to benefit them the most. Still, what happens if you uncap a perfectly merited WAR?
- They gain 12 DEX and VIT.
- Their Warcry and Aggressor recasts drops 50 seconds.
- Instead of meriting three of Upheaval, Resolution, Ruinator, and Stardiver, now they can merit all four.
- They gain 14-15 accuracy (0-8% hit rate) with some of their proc weapons.

So you have barely made Warrior stronger. The other jobs benefit even less than this. Plus, at a time when people complain about the difficulty of events (like Legion, Provenance Watcher, etc.) this gives them an opportunity to help themselves. I mean, what do you want our failure rate to be on these events? Is it really too low at the moment?



B. Why should we do it?
1) This will give players nearly-unlimited potential for character growth. - It would take 6706 merits to cap out. Players currently have ~2000 or less. Even with an epeening "I get 250k/hr" Abyssea party, it would still take them almost 80 rl 24-hour days to cap out from 2000 merits.

2) A limiting merit system has always been the antithesis of the job system. - One of the major draws to FFXI is that the game lets you play through with only one character, which you are free to become attached to. There are certainly times when you need to change your role, and the job system accommodates that. It is silly to suddenly reverse this at the level cap, which is where players spend almost all of their time these days. When the cap was at level 75, you go 1 to 75 as a Red Mage playing however was convenient in any type of party, but Tier 2 merits forced you to decide whether you wanted to use your Red Mage to solo or do Salvage.

3) Programming-wise, this almost has to be possible and reasonable. - The category caps have been increased before several times. You could either remove them from the interface (clean) or increase them to the maximum amount (dirty but definitely possible).

4) At a time when content is sparse, this would give a much-needed boost to activity. - People want to play, but don't have anything that they can do to improve their character. This would make it so there is almost always something they can do.

5) Increased participation in events/systems that yield XP. - More people would do Grounds of Valor. More people would do Campaign. More people would do Besieged. More people would do Dominion Ops. More people would do Voidwatch. etc. If you increase the incentives, you increase the odds that people will partake in an event. Giving XP value serves as an incentive.





Fellow posters, I challenge you. Come up with a situation where the above proposed change would alter the way we do any event. Where it would make something noticeably easier. Where it would affect the "balance" of anything. Try!

This sounds retarded TBH. I know plenty of players waste their time leveling useless jobs to 99, but really. Let those players max their merit but please don't suggest the dev to let us waste our playtime doing "exp". We need something else than abyssea. If you want to make differences between players allow for a new kind of merit system farmed with upcoming content points. Legion wouldn't be fail if, for instance, the point would be used to upgrade stats. You know very well that abyssea is botted to hell, and people ("some people") would end up getting PL bots and let their char all day gathering the exp (if you allow for more meirt point cap). I mean it's time to evolve, merits are from the past. Some random thoughts :

food "upgrades" : granted x or y bonus when using food. For instance do a job trait so that when I play SMN, I'm getting pet accuracy when using a given food. The merits are earned by collecting exp in neo salvage.

party "upgrades" : grants various bonus (infinte possibilities) when teaming up with other : double attack, crit, TH ...


My point is, if you want to establish a new hierarchy between players you need to get aways from abyssea and exp spam. We've seen how it ended up with cruor farming. SE needs to put in place a system that prevents players from spamming without being as cock blocking as some events.

[Damane]

This sounds retarded TBH. I know plenty of players waste their time leveling useless jobs to 99, but really. Let those players max their merit but please don't suggest the dev to let us waste our playtime doing "exp". We need something else than abyssea. If you want to make differences between players allow for a new kind of merit system farmed with upcoming content points. Legion wouldn't be fail if, for instance, the point would be used to upgrade stats. You know very well that abyssea is botted to hell, and people ("some people") would end up getting PL bots and let their char all day gathering the exp (if you allow for more meirt point cap). I mean it's time to evolve, merits are from the past. Some random thoughts :

food "upgrades" : granted x or y bonus when using food. For instance do a job trait so that when I play SMN, I'm getting pet accuracy when using a given food. The merits are earned by collecting exp in neo salvage.

party "upgrades" : grants various bonus (infinte possibilities) when teaming up with other : double attack, crit, TH ...


My point is, if you want to establish a new hierarchy between players you need to get aways from abyssea and exp spam. We've seen how it ended up with cruor farming. SE needs to put in place a system that prevents players from spamming without being as cock blocking as some events.

seriously dont know what you are doing wrong, but I got all jobs to 99 (-DRG) and capped all merits while doing VW, some exp pts, and casual stuff. So yeah if I ever get DRG up to 99 (if I ever want) and get those merits capped by doing random shit like VW, dynamis, etc. what next? Sit on capped merits? I am throwing out merits on jobs atm I dont even play! because my main jobs merits have reached their limits!

[MarkovChain]

seriously dont know what you are doing wrong, but I got all jobs to 99 (-DRG) and capped all merits while doing VW, some exp pts, and casual stuff. So yeah if I ever get DRG up to 99 (if I ever want) and get those merits capped by doing random shit like VW, dynamis, etc. what next? Sit on capped merits? I am throwing out merits on jobs atm I dont even play! because my main jobs merits have reached their limits!

Ok bro so you are the kind of player to level all job, and all you can do is exp every job, we got it. The real players want event to make their main job progress (gear or new merits-type progression). Do I need to pull the chart of what job sucks and what job doesn't suck ? You leveled every job and don't use any lol, faceplam. Allowing my monk to caps its CHR wooot ? Since you guys like achieving useless things why don't you cap AF2+2 on every job ? I mean it's certainly better of an upgrade than the ability to cap your VIT. I think too many people have been used to the cokcblocking-less grind fest that was abyssea. EXP or MERIT no longer have value, that's why allowing for more merit wouldn't introduce character diversity.

[Taint2]

Ok bro so you are the kind of player to level all job, and all you can do is exp every job, we got it. The real players want event to make their main job progress (gear or new merits-type progression). Do I need to pull the chart of what job sucks and what job doesn't suck ? You leveled every job and don't use any lol, faceplam. Allowing my monk to caps its CHR wooot ? Since you guys like achieving useless things why don't you cap AF2+2 on every job ? I mean it's certainly better of an upgrade than the ability to cap your VIT. I think too many people have been used to the cokcblocking-less grind fest that was abyssea. EXP or MERIT no longer have value, that's why allowing for more merit wouldn't introduce character diversity.

The problem is the limitations. I play 5 DDs jobs: MNK,WAR,DRK,SAM,RNG all have their uses in endgame but I'm extremely limited in what I can merit. SAM has to have Shoha, WAR/DRK have to Resolution, MNK has to have H2H merits. Now I'm stuck filling in the rest or stuck gimping a job.

As players like myself get more and more capped on everything we have almost nothing left to work for.
I would finish Spharai tomorrow but I have zero merits left for SS which would gimp the weapon. Same goes for Mandau, Anni and Excal. All of which you need their merited WSs or you are gimping them.

[Kincard]

I'm not sure I understand what MarkovChain's objection to the OP is given that he actually agrees with him. He says that uncapping merits is pointless because it will barely affect players based on the fact that capping VIT or CHR is worthless...which is exactly what the OP's point is, that removing the caps affects nothing enough to warrant the existing limitations in the first place. It's adding something for players to do with their merits instead of just sitting on them all the time, and it can add some stuff for players to do in their offtime when they're not running events with their linkshells or whatever.

The great thing is what he suggests as an alternative. Instead of grinding xp in Abyssea, why not grind xp in Neo Salvage instead! That'll really show how amazing of a player you are, killing massive amounts of fodder monsters in one entry limited area instead of killing massive amounts of fodder monsters in one entry limited area.

[Damane]

Ok bro so you are the kind of player to level all job, and all you can do is exp every job, we got it. The real players want event to make their main job progress (gear or new merits-type progression). Do I need to pull the chart of what job sucks and what job doesn't suck ? You leveled every job and don't use any lol, faceplam. Allowing my monk to caps its CHR wooot ? Since you guys like achieving useless things why don't you cap AF2+2 on every job ? I mean it's certainly better of an upgrade than the ability to cap your VIT. I think too many people have been used to the cokcblocking-less grind fest that was abyssea. EXP or MERIT no longer have value, that's why allowing for more merit wouldn't introduce character diversity.

your comment makes no sense and absolutly missed my point, pls use your glow on another topic that comes out of your after.

[Yinnyth]

I like the idea of more diversity from one character to the next, not less. Couldn't they just fix merits so the ones that never get used are more appealing instead?