Job/Merit points? (Idea)

[Shurrikhan]

I'll take options, not more leveling. Give me a different "school" of archery, a different "aspect" of the dragoon, or different 'variations' of Heavy Thrust, etc., but I've no interest in leveling GL enough to cheese every jump in a particular fight, every pure offensive buff or damaging ability to maximum, support buffs for effect or duration, and my mitigation to where I'm swap-proofed, all just to get where I'm considered 'complete'.
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Only because of the quote above me, sorry Welsper:

Choice doesn't exactly exist when it comes to making your character stronger for your own goals. A clear and essentially set path is always going to exist when it comes to the numbers game. The only actual choice that does exist, however, is which set path you want to take. Math destroys the idea of "choice" when it comes to MMORPGs and picking what would be considered the "best" option.

Math doesn't destroy choices. Imbalance does. There are plenty of far more popular talent choices in WoW, for instance, that aren't mathematically optimal, simply because they have a reduced skill cap; it's harder for them to go wrong, attracting the less confident or more necessarily battlefield-attentive players. In many other cases the talents provide different playstyles while achieving near identical results in a variety of situations. That's well done. The only times they're lackluster talent-swap-tome-spenders are when, excused by the alleged "illusion of choice", they simply craft one specifically aligned talent for each situation (your single-target, your cleave, and your true AoE).

That said, 100% agree when it comes to this being pathed. I just think there can still be enough variance within those paths to feel diverse.

Having said all that though, I am for the idea of merits. While the choice thing that you're talking about and wanting is not a realistic possibility, the idea that we're not wasting our time doing things along the way (like killing mobs in a dungeon of any level), at least becomes rewarding in its own way.

I get the same pang of regret sometimes, but it really is pretty much mitigated by the fact that I'm doing those things for the tomes or the gear, and I'm getting exactly that. The only thing I might want more, really, is a half-decent conversion of capped exp gains to bonus exp, especially in particular settings (e.g. healing for 3 friends while they level their newfangled Ninjas (back in 2.4), and then swapping back to mine while someone else rotates into that role). I just really don't want to tap on an additional, somewhat ambiguous, layer of leveling to all our capped classes at this point.