Job/Merit points? (Idea)

[Fevelle]

..Get a shiney medal for every time you do a dungeon with a job?

Do people just not like playing a game for the sake of playing a game anymore?

Jesus, why are you so defensive? Yes, I play the game for the sake of playing, and that's why I started an alt and I'm leveling all classes together to 30, 40 and so on. Because I love playing the game just for the sake of playing it.

What I proposed is something that wouldn't cause any trouble to anyone, to show how much experience you have with a certain class, just like a degree or something. Just like a character in FF5 gets a mastery status with 3 stars above his head after acquiring all abilities with certain job. It could be linked to the Mentor System (do Mentor roulette X times as Y class).

[Blitzace]

Then we get into the whole PF of "Must have maxed merit points!"

And that is the community at fault. not SE.
This community is spoiled with rotten apples at times, Like every game.

FFXIV Just takes it to a whole new level, Often the idiotic people that make clear parties/farm groups with - KNOW ALL PHASES 100% 1FAIL=KICK.
Fail themselfs, And at the same time they fail to kick themselfs.

[Duelle]

And that is the community at fault. not SE.

Design always influences player behavior (so yes, it is SE's fault).

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The problem with merits was, as mentioned earlier, the fact that it padded out FFXI's lifespan due to being stack at specific level caps. The other part is that they were the epitome of false choices in terms of design (see: Dark Knights being given the choice to merit useless abilities like Arcane Circle or useful abilities like Soul Eater).

As I've said before, something to consider would be using merits to cosmetically affect your character rather than affect performance. Maybe allow you to purchase the option to glamour gear your job can't equip (a BLM meriting the ability to glamour Of Striking gear), alter visual effects of abilities/spells (maybe change the explosion effect for Fire III into a burning rock falling on the target), or possibly some extra cosmetic abilities (a DRG meriting the ability to super jump around instead of using a mount). The potential is there, the devs simply need to devote time to it.

[TaleraRistain]

It's an interesting idea, but it would just become one more thing a "good" player of the class has. It's like cross-class skills right now. No one is encouraged to experiment and find new ways that work because if they don't have the "required" cross-class skills they're inferior. I've seen this sort of system become cookie cutter in other games like EQ, EQ2, and WoW as well. Now if they could implement it like Diablo II talent trees where you actually could have different successful builds, they might be on to something.

[DarthVella]

Now if they could implement it like Diablo II talent trees where you actually could have different successful builds, they might be on to something.

I think the main problem with trees like that is that it is always expensive or difficult to respec; which gives people incentive to pick the "optimal" set of skills for most situations. When I first saw this thread I envisioned a skill/trait tree for each class in which you can only put so many points, and any excess points you earn (up to a cap) give you the ability to reassign a single point.

The other problem is that there's little incentive to experiment. So you could also have it such that you have to choose once per day which skills you want active, and you can't pick skills you've used in the last two days or so. That also gives you room to play your class slightly differently each time but still have your perceived "optimal" set available for whenever you schedule your raids.

[Reynhart]

So you could also have it such that you have to choose once per day which skills you want active, and you can't pick skills you've used in the last two days or so. That also gives you room to play your class slightly differently each time but still have your perceived "optimal" set available for whenever you schedule your raids.

A system like Diablo III. You could buy all of your skills in the end, but you can only pick a few of them at any given time.

I don't think "once a day" is necessary. You could just do like the cross-class skills, where everything is put on cooldown once you change a skill.

[DarthVella]

Ah, okay. Sorry, I was just gabbing off ideas as they came to me and didn't know how Diablo did theirs.

[Nicobo]

...Even after hitting level 60, you could still earn exp and say 1,500,000 exp = 1 merit point...

I like it but still want to say it was so naive! Sorry.^^; I am pretty sure SE will not let you earn the points by this way as it is no pain to eveyrone.
Very likely they will give you an item and you have to fill it by something like "light farming" + optionally throw many materiaV into it,
then you get 1 pt, you need 20pt to + 1str. then everyone will blame they cannot max it in a week ^^;

[TaleraRistain]

I think the main problem with trees like that is that it is always expensive or difficult to respec; which gives people incentive to pick the "optimal" set of skills for most situations.

Not always. It was fairly easy to change your trees around in EQ2 and you could even save different builds I think, but that game suffered from having really good and desirable skills in x tree and then total crap in the others. It's a single player (or co-op) game, but Borderlands II would be another good example. It's fairly easy IIRC to swap your skills around to try out different builds and they all have the traits of the base class but play just differently enough to keep things interesting. Unfortunately, it would require a lot of dev resources to balance everything properly and I don't think FF has the dev team they would need for it right now.

[Madrone]

Instead of choices, you can have enough points to max everything. The only real choice is how you prioirtize them.

I badly want this so that my main job really feels like my main job, and as something to do during content voids. But XIV sets a fast vertical pace already. The game would need to go horizontal for awhile for a system like this to flourish.