[SUGGESTION] LIMIT POINT / MERIT POINT SYSTEM

[Velthice]

I'm not going to argue with you. I'm just going to stand by what I said.

[NovaLevossida]

I like merit points / alternate advancement as it were in EverQuest, but in the post-WoW era, there's going to be a "best" and "correct" way to spend your points, so it's just going to kill customization anyway. "Oh, you specced for increased Contagion duration? That's a DPS loss over improved Fester, you gimp."

I'd really only support this if your merit point allocations were invisible to others.

[Deathscythe343]

alternate advancement as it were in EverQuest,

This is probably my favorite system in any of the MMOs that I have played. It allowed for so much character advancement beyond just getting the best gear.

Yes, the min/maxers will find the "best" things to put points into. But one of the best things about the EQ system was that, given enough time, any player could get all possible AAs.

Something like this would easily give people something to do other than cap on tomestones for the week.

[Callinon]

I like merit points / alternate advancement as it were in EverQuest, but in the post-WoW era, there's going to be a "best" and "correct" way to spend your points, so it's just going to kill customization anyway. "Oh, you specced for increased Contagion duration? That's a DPS loss over improved Fester, you gimp."

I'd really only support this if your merit point allocations were invisible to others.

Your damage output would also have to be invisible to others.

Here's the thing about things like this. And it's the reason WoW moved away from talent trees (something else people ask for a lot).

They aren't real choices. You aren't really making choices there. It looks like you're making choices. You seem to be selecting from a list and allocating points based on what you want. But in reality you have exactly two choices to choose between:
1: Pick the mathematically strongest build.
2: Do it wrong.

People blame min/maxers for sucking the fun out of a game, but the fact of the matter is that in group content you're playing with other people. It's disrespectful to them not to come prepared to play your best game. If you're strictly a solo player and never do any group content, then have at it, your choices are meaningless anyway.

So you're really just choosing to either intentionally gimp yourself or play the best build. It's the same problem I have with the bonus stat allocation system. It isn't a real choice. You can either put the points into your primary stat, or you can choose to do it wrong. The only remotely interesting choice comes from tanks choosing between more vit or more str. And even that can be boiled down to numbers based on gear level for what that tank "should" do to be optimal.

I'm all for meaningful choices, and I like customization. But I'm against the false choice systems that talent trees and merit points produce. They just turn into traps for newer or less-informed players to fall in to and make a mistake just because they didn't know everything.

[Nicobo]

...Let me give an example:

Normal level 60 monster would yield a level 60 player 400EXP, while under Merit it would gain 1LP. It would take 100LP to get your first merit (this is just a number im making up at the top of my head) or basically 100 EXP yielding Monster KOs.

For gathering you would need to completely harvest an EXP yielding node to gain 1LP and 100LP would get you your first merit.

For crafting you would need to craft 1HQ and 50NQ EXP yielding items to get 1LP and 100LP to get your first merit.
...

If it is SE implementation, I can foresee it will be a "relic zodiac" on your skills but not the weapon,
So very likely it will be something like you farm Merit_ATMA, collect Lights, farm dungeon drops, farm materia5 and pray for infusion...etc
I will not so naive to think it will come from my excessive exp after I capped my lv.

Moreover, look at desync item, if they implement merit points, it is predictable that it will be limited to 1-3 jobs or what 300pts shared by all jobs. Eventually it just defeats the principle "everyone can do everything on one character" again.


therefore I OBJECT Merit Point.

[Bishop81]

Your damage output would also have to be invisible to others.

Here's the thing about things like this. And it's the reason WoW moved away from talent trees (something else people ask for a lot).

They aren't real choices. You aren't really making choices there. It looks like you're making choices. You seem to be selecting from a list and allocating points based on what you want. But in reality you have exactly two choices to choose between:
1: Pick the mathematically strongest build.
2: Do it wrong.

People blame min/maxers for sucking the fun out of a game, but the fact of the matter is that in group content you're playing with other people. It's disrespectful to them not to come prepared to play your best game. If you're strictly a solo player and never do any group content, then have at it, your choices are meaningless anyway.

So you're really just choosing to either intentionally gimp yourself or play the best build. It's the same problem I have with the bonus stat allocation system. It isn't a real choice. You can either put the points into your primary stat, or you can choose to do it wrong. The only remotely interesting choice comes from tanks choosing between more vit or more str. And even that can be boiled down to numbers based on gear level for what that tank "should" do to be optimal.

I'm all for meaningful choices, and I like customization. But I'm against the false choice systems that talent trees and merit points produce. They just turn into traps for newer or less-informed players to fall in to and make a mistake just because they didn't know everything.

For players like you, there is no "choice". You are obsessed with being "optimal" - like a smoker addicted to smoking.

Worse, you see your way of playing as the only way and think everyone would play the same way.

Never does it occur to you that some people would play for "fun" instead of "optimal".

[Khalithar]

Part of me rather likes the simplified end game progression system. Do these raids for these items to get this gear that is the best, period. No spreadsheeting or research needed to optimize things like stats, no weighing different pieces and having to adjust which stats I wanted. Just a quick clean get this item, equip it, done.

Snip

Well said, +1 to all your points.

[Xerius]

The merit point system is one of the few things that I don't miss at all from FFXI. It just turned into congratulations on hitting the top level, if you thought the previous 75 levels were a grind then you're going to love 75+

[Dhex]

Another point to be brought up; rather than focusing on how to implement more dynamic customization - let's talk about what we want customization to do for us as players.

Ideally (for me) they would make each Merit/spec/whatever viable for various encounters/mechanics/group compositions - this would require tailoring some mechanics to certain builds across multiple fights, balancing, and adding enough fights so that any given build does not have a significant advantage over all the rest; additionally if they make the Merit/spec/whatever easily redistributed nobody would be shoe-horned into only doing "one-thing" - game meta is pretty much incontrovertible at this point. Damage damage damage - but shifting some of the dynamics off of gear and grinding your way toward bigger numbers every 3 months would obviously add some depth to the game overall and give a more full realized sense of character ownership - the game would still be revolve around damage and efficiency but players could compensate for play-style or gaps in their group skill level or ability or tailor their static setups towards the content they're doing regularly so they can work better as a team.

Edit:

Additionally - why is it that Yoshi-P & Team rely solely on themselves and in-house testing when balancing fights, Jobs, mechanics? We could really do with a test server and test server feedback section on the forums so that we as a player base had a little bit more input and could show the devs. possible imbalances or oversights in their designs. I think that a lot of the problems with FFXIV come from a limited pool of testers that have a preconceived idea or notions about how & what their playerbase will do. Test servers would go great lengths towards better overall balance.

[FreeLancer4]

So your suggestion for improvement is to not change? You're happy grinding out a single raid and a few dungeons every 3 months for essentially the same thing over and over and over? Will that really hold your interest for three more years?

You don't have anything more compelling to offer towards improvement of the progression system?

Just more of the same status quo? Just give you higher numbers with the same stats every patch without adding any depth to the combat system or game meta - keep on the same repetitive vertical treadmill every few months?


What's the difference between lv60 i170 and lv60 i210 besides number bloat...?

This. If It's expected to have this continue for the foreseeable future of this game then myself and many others are without a doubt going to be jumping ship. Many including myself have complained for all the hype, heavensward has been a little bit more then a letdown to a wide group of players. I am sticking around mostly because I have made a good few friends here and have been a fan of FF for years. However if some interesting changes don't come by atleast 4.0 (I'll try to stick it out with heavensward) then I feel I wont be getting anything more from it. It wouldn't be much more then forced entertainment at that point.