[dev1006] Merit Point Adjustments!

[Runespider]

They should only allow obtaining these in XP parties outside of Abyssea, or they won't be worth adding as content since they will be capped in one day.

Also why not uncapped combat skills so people can cap all weapon type skills on every jobs, not like someone with everything capped is going to be overpowered >_>

[Gokku]

Awesome! I have wanted that for a long time!

It seems silly to have a cap at all for Magic/Weapon skills though. No job's maximum potential is limited by skill merits, so having caps on those categories is only counterproductive to the job system.

Like:
* No job will be using more than three weapon types and two defensive traits at once, so letting us merit more skills than that won't make any one job more powerful. Those caps only limits our ability to be the best at multiple jobs.
* No job really uses more than three types of magic at once (unless you count Enhancing), so it's kind of silly to limit that category. It just stops the best BLMs from also being the best SMNs.

You guys should just uncap those categories.

your incorrect in the no job gaining anything from merits in that monks hand to hand skill level increases our BASE damage unlike all other jobs who only get acc/atk per skill level. to be exact the difference of a monk in full hth skill gear and with merits id 391 hth skill for 46.01 base dmg vs 375 hth skill for a base damage of 44.25.

[Neika]

Woot! More magic skills! My WHM and BLM thank you

[RaenRyong]

your incorrect in the no job gaining anything from merits in that monks hand to hand skill level increases our BASE damage unlike all other jobs who only get acc/atk per skill level. to be exact the difference of a monk in full hth skill gear and with merits id 391 hth skill for 46.01 base dmg vs 375 hth skill for a base damage of 44.25.

Nooo, what he's saying is that the caps imposed at the moment just stop you playing many different jobs at max potential (in a game which encourages job swapping) since having no cap at all wouldn't overpower any job since no job is able to productively use more than the current capped amount of skills at once.

[Neofire]

Completely agree with this.

that guys post whom you quoted makes sense, that's Why' I hate HNMs, all they ever were was a apparent ploy get dummies to send years trying to get that one piece of gear lol

[ffxkenshin]

let combat and magic cap individually per skill, but don't cap the category.. it's the way it should be for a long time... i never wanted to force to "main" job on 1 job, i play and love all/most of them

[Jamesruglia]

The point of the Job System is to be flexible, not to be the best at everything. I have to re-affirm Alhanelem's comments on the issue. As it is now, you can specialize in and perfect one job and still be absolutely drop-dead awesome at other ones.

I welcome the expansion for merits, but think about it: It's not going to let you be more flexible than you already could have been. Rather, it's a better opportunity to further specialize and perfect one or two jobs-and unless this game changes drastically compared to how it's been since day 1, that's what people will mostly use this merit cap increase for. Myself included.

[Flunklesnarkin]

It's a start...


The changes will be nice but ultimately not affect anybody's game-play that much.


I'd really liked it if they added group 3 job merits...

and maybe make them take 10 merits points a piece per level.. so you can't cap them in 2 or 3 hours >_>

[Neofire]

They should only allow obtaining these in XP parties outside of Abyssea, or they won't be worth adding as content since they will be capped in one day.

Also why not uncapped combat skills so people can cap all weapon type skills on every jobs, not like someone with everything capped is going to be overpowered >_>

Good god I get sick of people crying about how fast someone complete certain things. Just do you and letter others play how they want, if you got a problem with me capping merits before you do then tough cookie.

[Arcon]

The point of the merit system is to force people to specialize, while the point of the job system is that you don't have to specialize. They've always been at odds, this is just taking one more step towards rectifying the issue. Shared categories shouldn't have a category cap.

Very true, this has always bothered me about the whole merit system in general. It was designed to specialize in some category, offensive mage, buffing mage, defense tank, shadow tank, melee, etc., however the very job system was one of the main reasons that put FFXI above games like WoW (or pretty much all other MMORPGs) in that you didn't have to specify, you didn't have to resort to just one class. You could play whichever way you wanted, and excel at everything, that was until the merit system. Now you can't even excel at everything within one job due to job specific merits, let alone the excel at everything overall.

That has always bugged me, I hate trade offs, same with gear, at least it's possible to gear swap when you need it, so that made it a lot better. However that doesn't work with merits, admittedly, with current EXP gain it's not hard to change merits, but it's still not a flexible system. And I know it was designed to be that way, I just don't think that way is the best. Of course this is a matter of opinion, but as I said, this principle of being able to do everything at once was one of the things that set this game apart from its competition, and was one of the things that attracted me the most. I really appreciate this step forward in what I consider the right direction, and hope SE continues down this road.

Edit:

As it is now, you can specialize in and perfect one job and still be absolutely drop-dead awesome at other ones.

No, you can be perfect at one aspect of one job, there's plenty of jobs that can't be perfect in all their roles with the options we currently have. Actually that holds true for all jobs, if you consider job specific merits, since they force you to choose between what your job should be capable of. Sure, many jobs have rather useless merits in their respective categories, which makes it easy to choose, others however have many useful merits in each category. Those jobs are forced to give up certain capabilities for others, so they can't even excel at even one particular job.