Merit Weapon Skill Adjustments April Update

[Alhanelem]

I'm not sure that you understand what the word positive means. Positive is having the ability to play as much of the game as you choose. Negative is being told "You can't play this part because that kid over there wants to have something that you can't have".

I looked up the definition of those words in the dictionary, and it didn't match what you wrote here.

Just saying.

[Randnum]

It is generally a bad idea in a community based game to make a character's power at a given level completely dependent on nothing but a time investment.

Most really good gear requires either teamwork or clear skill. Merits may require these but they certainly require less of either.

If Samurai A is the same as or stronger than Samurai B even though Samurai B is totally devoted to Samurai and Samurai A just has more time to play, your design has failed Samurai B in a community based game. This may however make Samurai A happier.

That's all this is in the end, this 'argument'. Lots of Samurai A not caring how Samurai B is affected, and arguing that people who do care that Samurai B is affected are all being illogical and stupid.

If you find 4/5 to be horrible and make your job unworthy of bothering to play, think of all those people who, for whatever time restrictive reason, haven't reached 4/5 yet on whatever. If that makes no sense to you, you are Samurai A.

[FrankReynolds]

It is generally a bad idea in a community based game to make a character's power at a given level completely dependent on nothing but a time investment.

Most really good gear requires either teamwork or clear skill. Merits may require these but they certainly require less of either.

If Samurai A is the same as or stronger than Samurai B even though Samurai B is totally devoted to Samurai and Samurai A just has more time to play, your design has failed Samurai B in a community based game. This may however make Samurai A happier.

That's all this is in the end, this 'argument'. Lots of Samurai A not caring how Samurai B is affected, and arguing that people who do care that Samurai B is affected are all being illogical and stupid.

If you find 4/5 to be horrible and make your job unworthy of bothering to play, think of all those people who, for whatever time restrictive reason, haven't reached 4/5 yet on whatever. If that makes no sense to you, you are Samurai A.

What you are implying is that samurai B should be better than samurai A simply because (he thinks) he likes samurai more than samurai A.

I am not samurai A. I am simply a fair and logical human being who understands the correlation between hard work and reward.

Saying that you should be better than someone else simply because you think that they don't want it as much as you do, despite the fact that that person has put far more time and effort into it than you is ludicrous. Talk about entitlement...

[Randnum]

As I said. Community based game.

But I give you this.

If Samurai A liked playing Samurai as much as Samurai B does, then they merited Samurai first. Then, technically, any complaint they have would be about another job, making it Red Mage A vs Red Mage B, or such.

So your argument, while 'technically' correct in any non community gamestate, fails here. Entitlement applies when one person gets opportunities in this way.

You have the same opportunities as Samurai B, you just want more of them.

Edit: See, you could reduce this to a different absurdity. If I like NIN best, why do I have to stop at 5/5? Why can't I just keep getting stronger and stronger Blade: Shun? Even if it tapers off and the bonus diminishes, why can't I just keep boosting it little by little forever? That way my hard work rewards me, right? But then what will you stop at? If the game had both options open... unlimited Merit WS and unlimited WS mod growth, would you be 'gimp' or 'unwilling to play it' if you noticed that serious NIN had their Blade: Shun at 20/20 and yours was only at 8?

If not, why are you 'unwilling to play' at 4/5 while the 'serious' play at 5/5?

[FrankReynolds]

If Samurai A liked playing Samurai as much as Samurai B does, then they merited Samurai first. Then, technically, any complaint they have would be about another job, making it Red Mage A vs Red Mage B, or such.

So your argument, while 'technically' correct in any non community gamestate, fails here. Entitlement applies when one person gets opportunities in this way.

You have the same opportunities as Samurai B, you just want more of them.

Your argument works both ways. Should they raise / delete the cap, Samurai B would have the same opportunities. He would just want less of them.

The difference being that when there is no cap, we both have the ability to do what we want. Where as when there is a cap, he gets to do what he chooses, while I am limited. His Samurai is exactly the same in either case and suffers no penalty other than his perceived (It has already been pointed out that most people who play samurai or whatever job will have the same merits as other people playing that job) lack of uniqueness.

You are essentially saying that People should only be allowed to have 3 good weapon skills because That's how many it takes to keep samurai B happy and that somehow 3 is the perfect number and Samurai B is more important than everyone else.

Edit: See, you could reduce this to a different absurdity. If I like NIN best, why do I have to stop at 5/5? Why can't I just keep getting stronger and stronger Blade: Shun? Even if it tapers off and the bonus diminishes, why can't I just keep boosting it little by little forever? That way my hard work rewards me, right? But then what will you stop at? If the game had both options open... unlimited Merit WS and unlimited WS mod growth, would you be 'gimp' or 'unwilling to play it' if you noticed that serious NIN had their Blade: Shun at 20/20 and yours was only at 8?

This is pretty off topic. I want to be on par with others who have put in the same amount of work as me. You make it sound like I want to be better than them. If that guy wants to work harder on his ninja, his ninja should be better than mine. He shouldn't have to suffer just because I really like ninja but I don't have the time/desire to merit it as well as him.

Let's apply your argument to some other absurdity: Say I only want to work 10 hours a week and make $100 a week because I'm a balding middle aged Mongoloid who lives in my grandmas basement and I like to play video games more than I like to earn money. According to your logic, everyone should have to live on 10/hrs a week at a salary of $100 because I'm too preoccupied with other things to earn more money than that. It would be totally unfair if you got to make more money just because you had more time to get an education and work longer hours right?

If not, why are you 'unwilling to play' at 4/5 while the 'serious' play at 5/5?

Who says I am not serious? Are you really positing that people who have all jobs leveled and geared are not as serious as people who only have one or two jobs? Think about that. If your favorite job is warrior, you can't even have all the weaponskills for that one job. I guess anyone who plays warrior can't be serious about any other jobs huh?

[Randnum]

Never said anything one way or the other about the decision, I am only pointing out one logic thing.

You want to be the best you can, for equal work. You can do that. You actually agree with me in the second section. That if the NIN wants to be really good for their effort then they should. But they can't. Note that part, it's my only direct point.

I understand that this only partially applies because 'you can't use all the WS on one job', but it still overall makes your character in a community perspective better.

All I'm saying is what you are saying, but with a different perspective. You get limited in your number of WS for the same reason that Hypothetical Ninja is limited in the total strength of their WS.

If every increase after level 5 in the WS was just 1% more, they would have a 5% difference in their WS strength after a certain number of merit points. Would you be willing to accept this 5% difference? That your personal NIN was 5% weaker in a WS than theirs? I may have misinterpreted you but you seem like you would, because that's reasonable to you.

I'm just saying that in a game of arbitrary limits, the current change is decent... no... quite good, because your 4/5 WS is only 5% weaker than 'Samurai B's' 5/5 WS. If 5% is a big deal for any reason other than 'it isn't the maximum', then you'll keep meriting to keep up with Hypothetical Ninja.

I am getting the impression, therefore, that you want to reach the cap because it is the cap. Am I wrong in this? Are you not dissatisfied with needing to choose 4/5 simply because 5/5 exists?

[FrankReynolds]

Never said anything one way or the other about the decision, I am only pointing out one logic thing.

You want to be the best you can, for equal work. You can do that. You actually agree with me in the second section. That if the NIN wants to be really good for their effort then they should. But they can't. Note that part, it's my only direct point.

I understand that this only partially applies because 'you can't use all the WS on one job', but it still overall makes your character in a community perspective better.

All I'm saying is what you are saying, but with a different perspective. You get limited in your number of WS for the same reason that Hypothetical Ninja is limited in the total strength of their WS.

If every increase after level 5 in the WS was just 1% more, they would have a 5% difference in their WS strength after a certain number of merit points. Would you be willing to accept this 5% difference? That your personal NIN was 5% weaker in a WS than theirs? I may have misinterpreted you but you seem like you would, because that's reasonable to you.

I'm just saying that in a game of arbitrary limits, the current change is decent... no... quite good, because your 4/5 WS is only 5% weaker than 'Samurai B's' 5/5 WS. If 5% is a big deal for any reason other than 'it isn't the maximum', then you'll keep meriting to keep up with Hypothetical Ninja.

I am getting the impression, therefore, that you want to reach the cap because it is the cap. Am I wrong in this? Are you not dissatisfied with needing to choose 4/5 simply because 5/5 exists?

To sum it up. I am fine with doing 95% damage because I didn't put in enough effort to do 100% damage.

I am not okay with doing 95% damage because someone decided that that makes other people feel special.

This cap limits the enjoyment for people who have more than a few jobs leveled. In large group settings people generally want you to come on the job that does 100% damage. Not the job that does 95% damage. When you limit the selection of weapon skills, people generally feel forced to spend them on the jobs with the most damage potential to begin with. Typically War, Sam Monk and Dark. When you combine the fact that those jobs are already more desirable to begin with and the fact that other jobs now have an additional weapon skill handicap, you get a very lopsided event roster.

In respect to the fact that You can only ever use one weapon skill at a time: Of course having more weapon skills than the next guy makes you a more desirable player, but so does everything else that you do to improve your character so there is no point worrying about that.

I have ninja leveled. My ninja is far better than my friends because he didn't bother to gear it. He doesn't like ninja. If you remove the cap, he might run out of things to merit and decide to dump 5/5 into katana just because he has the time / merits to do it. It won't change the fact that he has shitty gear, macros and skills on ninja though. As long as he doesn't care enough about ninja to build better gear sets than me, build better macros than me and practice until he is in fact better than me, it won't make a lick of difference. I will still be special regardless of his merits.

This whole argument of needing caps in order to foster originality or something is ludicrous. It's like people really believe that every SAM/WAR/DRK main is gonna suddenly start showing up to every event on PUP and take up all the spots just because they finally got their H2H weapon skills unlocked.

People who like the jobs like DNC, PUP, SMN etc. feel like they have to gimp their favorite jobs in order to make their more group friendly jobs like SAM etc. as good as can be. I don't really see how that benefits anyone.

[Randnum]

My disagreement with you is purely in the idea that you are upset with being limited 'to make someone else feel special'.

My point is that unless all limits are removed, removing that particular one does in fact make someone else less special. That someone may also do the same amount of work because there's a different limit in place. Whether the limits should exist at all isn't my gripe with what you are saying at all. I'd love to just get Blade: Shun at level 90 and I'd love to be able to merit it endlessly at 1% per merit after 5 merits. This would increase my enjoyment. I don't personally know why merit WS are even merited.

But if they are, and therefore somehow intended to make people stronger, then limiting 'me' to 5/5 on NIN but having no limit in general means simply that for your effort you get a stronger character and for my effort I get to compete with yours.

If I play 20 hours a week and devote it all to NIN, and you play 20 hours a week and spread it out over 5 jobs, why exactly do I not deserve to be better at NIN than you are?

tl;dr version: Allowing more lateral expansion than vertical expansion overall does in fact disadvantage specialist players so they limited both to let specialists feel special, yes.

[Alhanelem]

Who says I am not serious? Are you really positing that people who have all jobs leveled and geared are not as serious as people who only have one or two jobs? Think about that. If your favorite job is warrior, you can't even have all the weaponskills for that one job. I guess anyone who plays warrior can't be serious about any other jobs huh?

Warrior doesn't need every weapon skill. I don't know any warriors who use more than probably three weapon types any other time than in voidwatch for procs. Outside of that, you're probably just going to use the strongest slashing, blunt, or piercing weapon and WS. Three weapon skills covers that.

There's a difference between 'want' and 'need.' I can't think of a compelling *need* for more than three merit WS on any single job.

[Randnum]

In the end FrankReynolds is primarily right, but it comes down to what I said at the beginning.

"That's all this is in the end, this 'argument'. Lots of Samurai A not caring how Samurai B is affected, and arguing that people who do care that Samurai B is affected are all being illogical and stupid."

As long as there are limits, 'Samurai B' is affected because as you said, people want you at 100%, but then you have to compete with all the other 100%.

I believe you mean to say that you feel that you should be chosen equally to 'Samurai B' because you put in enough work to get the same WS/result, not because of some arbitrary 'badge of dedication', which is what the merit WS system is.

But if it's only through that arbitrary, possibly ridiculous 'badge' that Samurai B can stand out at a given level... if the intention of this system is to give people a quicker 'badge' to 'wear' than 'building a Relic, Mythic or Empyrean to max level', then the change currently planned is correct.

Community games don't work without these little 'badges'. Maybe this particular one is unnecessary, I have no stance on that, so you are right in all things except that you are fundamentally going "I don't want to be limited so that others feel special" because without that limit, the only limit still functional is the one preventing them from actually being special. Samurai A does make out better than Samurai B, because while you can go "I merited Shoha to full, I can be your Samurai." and it have a little meaning, you can expect much less effect from "I play Samurai all the time and try to be my best" with the same result, cause you will just go "so do I".