[byr1001] Uncapping the Merit Point Categories

[Nightfox]

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.

(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.

6) It would stop well-intentioned and dedicated players from making bad decisions. - There is nothing more disappointing than seeing someone with a relic, mythic, empyrean, etc. that obviously cares about their job and then discovering that they have merited in a very inefficient way. If you eliminated the merit category caps, people would cap all of the relevant merits for the job they love and this would simply not happen.




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!

I agree with this. /like

[Crimson_Slasher]

Got my support, if nothing else, than for merit ws. Because frankly while many other jobs can get by atleast halfway with something else, Sam cant pass up shoha... I dont even have shoha at the moment but if i plan to level my sam past 78 ill need to demerit Resolution(Not happening) Entropy(Nope) Or Requiscat(Hard choice but have to sacrafice...) to get it. Sucks for me because rather than having the choice to pick the ones i like, some are too essential and like other merits, are unlikely to be taken up for other, more deserving options.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Do like blizzard just did for D3. Stubournly stick to the point that you'll never increase any "levels" because you want to maintain the dificulty of the end game content. Then add 100 paragon levels without warning.
To that point, you could add an system that allows you to add more value to your base stats via an etreme ammount of XP. Say you set yourself to "XP your str." You would then need, I don't know, 1,000,000xp to permantly earn 1 point of str and then 1,250,000xp to get a second point. So on and so on until you reach that stat's XP cap.

[Nightfox]

I hope the dev team takes this into consideration, granted the amount of likes and post count, there are obviously alot that want this done. There have been multiple times I have de-merited just to put merits into something else because of caps. 5/5 Resolution > Tachi: Shoha > Shijin Spiral > Ruinator > Upheaval > Blade:Shun > Requiescat > and now Stardiver. Each weapon skill is useful and most are EXPECTED to be merited in many event and personal situations. And no, "get an empyrean weapon" does not solve this, lol. A sam without Shoha, a drk without Resolution, drg without Stardiver, etc. are barely accepted these days. The same applies to combat skills and stats, mostly everyone puts merits into STR and DEX, including myself. I'm constantly stuck with 30/30 merits and come up with excuses to merit something else when the plain fact is: "Merit caps need to go".

[Demon6324236]

You act as though likes make a difference. Its as simple as this, the idea came from a player, the end, not happening most likely. The fact it goes against what they always say about Merits, its not gonna happen sadly.

[Nightfox]

You act as though likes make a difference. Its as simple as this, the idea came from a player, the end, not happening most likely. The fact it goes against what they always say about Merits, its not gonna happen sadly.

I agree with you that they have shunned a lot of player base suggestions. However, I believe if a thread is kept alive and voted for by many, it will become more easily accepted for debate at least by the Dev. team. I only ask that they read some of the players experience and think more into the possibilities of a suggestion rather than dropping the "No" answer of the bat. I want to see exactly how free meriting will be unbalanced, not told. Let it be implemented on the test server perhaps to see how it affects gameplay and what players think of its addition.

[Kristal]

Uncapping some or all merit categories would require a good look at every single merit, and if they are doing that they could just as well rework the whole merit system. Looking at you, Enmity and RDM merits.

[detlef]

Uncapping some or all merit categories would require a good look at every single merit

Care to explain?

[Raksha]

Uncapping some or all merit categories would require a good look at every single merit, and if they are doing that they could just as well rework the whole merit system. Looking at you, Enmity and RDM merits.

Well if you assume that the majority of players arent totally retarded, then they are already meritting the most beneficial stuff already. This means that uncapping all of the merit point categories would only allow you to use all the stuff that wasnt good enough to merit in the first place.

I highly doubt that would be game breaking.

[Babekeke]

Well if you assume that the majority of players arent totally retarded, then they are already meritting the most beneficial stuff already. This means that uncapping all of the merit point categories would only allow you to use all the stuff that wasnt good enough to merit in the first place.

I highly doubt that would be game breaking.

No, it means that you don't have to merit for just a handful of jobs, you can merit everything for every job. Everyone becomes the same, with fully merited everything. No longer are there a few elite taru BLMs with INT merited, because everyone can merit int, as well as str dex for melee jobs, agi for ranged/eva jobs, and vit for tanking, mnd for enfeeb potency/cures.

No longer are there a few elite brds with just singing/wind/string merited, because the BLM mains will eventually also have them merited, even though they may only rarely use brd.

No longer would you just merit the weapons your main job uses, because you'd merit them all. So there's no longer as much gap between a war main, and a thf main that's just using war because noone wants thf for PW, etc.

Especially now you don't need to be good at a job to get elitist weapons. It's no longer unheard of for people to have multiple relics, and empys. Many people own an empy for a job that they wouldn't consider their main, and probably haven't merited that skill.

Good thing? idk, maybe. maybe not. Would make the game boring though I think, if there was no longer a choice, just an eventuality.