Idea: Merit system

[Bebekurenai]

I don't know if anyone came up with this already, but here goes anyways.

I was just thinking of an idea to introduce a job specialist system for battle classes similar to crafter specialists, and inspired by merits in FF11 and/or talents in WoW.

This system would be active from level 80 onwards and would allow us to specialize in one job only, having to exchange a good amount of the latest tomestones (maybe 1500) that cap a 450 per week, for an item that after using it, resets all your merits so you can relocate them. This would avoid changing them constantly as you'd have to prioritise if you want to spend tomes in gear, weapons, mats or merit reset.
How do you gain merits? Everytime you max a job to 80, and at completion of the relevant final job quest, one guaranteed reward will be a merit point. When you complete all jobs and their quests, together with the Amaro mount, you'd get an extra quest with lets say 3 merit points rewarded.
Now, what can you merit?
You can't merit role skills such as swift cast, rampart etc, and you can't merit stances such as iron will.
You can merit weaponskills, healing spells, damage spells and certain abilities.
Let's imagine you can merit healing spells up to three times with an increase of 3% potency every time, damage spells another 3 levels with 3% increase, weapons kills can merit two levels for also 3%. Just an example. And not all spells or all weaponskills, maybe the last part of a combo or the Dot potency.
The goal is to have people stand out a bit with their specialisation, have a scholar maybe fully merited on galvanize, partnered with an astro or whm that has merits in quicker casting, again, just an example.
And the point of getting merits by levelling other jobs you won't touch again is mainly to at least have a basic knowledge of other classes so you can do your own more efficiently (I know this doesn't really work now but hey, one more try).
What happens after ShB when we get a new expansion and a level cap increase to 90? Merits get an upgrade too. Let's be generous and up each category for additional 2 levels?
Level 80: galvanize potency increase by 3% each level 1/3
Level 90: galvanize potency increase by 3% each level 1/5

I'm not a programmer so I can't judge the balancing and impact it would have, but I find it quiet interesting as an idea, and it could work in FF14. What do you guys think?

[Bacent]

Oh gods please no. I enjoy being able to swap classes to do things with friends/groups, and 14 actually LETS PEOPLE PLAY MULTIPLE CLASSES. The only specializing is with crafting, and that's rather minimal in difference as well.

Last thing I want really want to see in game (Besides more eureka) is something like this that people will force you to follow what everyone does or get booted from groups even more than it happens right now just from materia. You're literally asking them to change how the game flows.

And if you want a merit system, then XI still has one - https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki...y:Merit_Points - But XI was more based around 'Certain races are better at certain classes' from what I remember. Racial bonuses are negligible here.

[Enkidoh]

Also FFXI's Merit System was to compensate for it's level cap being frozen at level 75 for something like eight years - FFXIV is constantly raising the cap ten levels every time a new expansion comes out so it's not necessary at this time. Maybe when we hit level 99 they might introduce something like that. But for the near future at least, it probably won't happen.

[Saefinn]

Also FFXI's Merit System was to compensate for it's level cap being frozen at level 75 for something like eight years - FFXIV is constantly raising the cap ten levels every time a new expansion comes out so it's not necessary at this time. Maybe when we hit level 99 they might introduce something like that. But for the near future at least, it probably won't happen.

At a level 99 they've introduced Job Points in addition to Merit Points and ended up implementing an iLevel system on top to compensate the fact they cannot go above level 99 due to a technicality. Then they have equipment restricted by "Superior" grades, which are tiered and gained after spedning certain amounts of job points.

I expect the way this game is coded probably won't find itself hitting hurdles like this where they have to creatively think of new forms of job progression for new content. I expect like WoW, we'll not be capped at level 99 but get to 100, 110 and so on.

[Vaer]

This would just end up splitting the player base.

Mechanics like merits is a "time to win" mechanic. It wouldn't be a complete disaster in self contained content that doesn't affect the main stuff (so stuff like Eureka, Diadem, etc.) but making people grind for hundreds of hours to be end game ready isn't something that would work too well in this game due to how it has been structured in general.

Basically, people would end up taking people with more merits.

You could design things where merits are not needed or taken into consideration, but the people with them will crush the content.

XI had barely any balance to begin with so it worked decently there. It also had barely any instancing in it's prime and what instancing there was allowed you to bring tons of people into it. XIV is a bit more structured with strict player limits.

[Raqrie_Tohka]

Sounds like EVE online skill system. Lot of enforced grind. Newcomer unfriendly. Min-max pressure.
Perhaps would work on non-combat stuff like Achievements and glamour which coincidentally there is some already.

[RoyalBeef]

Sounds like EVE online skill system. Lot of enforced grind. Newcomer unfriendly. Min-max pressure.

Wait, newcomers can't catch up to top tier players who have been playing for 6 years in 2 weeks? The tragedy.

[Nalien]

Merits aside, I do feel like XIV needs a new endgame progression system... Item level just really doesn't cut it, given it's largely redundant for the vast majority of content... Even then, stats and itemization in XIV are so barebones that item level increasing simply isn't remotely exciting... What's really the best we get? Extra Skill Speed granting an additional Fell Cleave during Inner Release? Can't think of anything other than that (and similar versions for other Jobs) that stat growth actually achieves, and I'm fairly certain that level of Skill Speed is achieved early on enough as to not be labelled as "endgame" progression...

[linay]

Item level just really doesn't cut it, given it's largely redundant for the vast majority of content...

In what way?

[Nalien]

In what way?

The majority of content can be beaten with multiple players straight up missing, nevermind their item level. Various other pieces of content straight up cap item level too (Eureka and Treasure Maps spring to mind), or straight up don't use gear to begin with (PvP, Deep Dungeons).

It's essentially a progression system that exists solely for Ultimate, I wouldn't even say Savage strictly needs it anymore... Savage gets beaten day 1 by people in crafted sets, sets which make grinding the previous patches highest item level to be ready for the next a poor joke. The only reason then to get gear from Savage is, as I said, for Ultimate (which, by-the-by, will eventually be item level capped, so...). It will help with prog for Savage, but even if we count that... That brings us to 5 instances in which max item level is remotely relevant... As I said, item level is just completely redundant for most of this game... As such it's stopped being an interesting endgame progression system IMO, it offers no feeling of progressing, even in the content it's relevant in. The sense of progression in XIVs endgame essentially comes entirely from learning mechanics and progressing through the story, IMO (not saying that's entirely a bad thing BTW). Even if I entertain the idea of item level being an endgame progression system, the effect of it is so weak (stats in this game are negligible and boring), and the means for obtaining it so plentiful and down right easy (you can literally never touch Lv80 content and end up gettings tomes for relevant gear), that it's just... Dull...

The patch cycle doesn't help, either... You get max item level, and what's that? The 24 man raid released and everyone can upgrade their tome gear to the same item level while sleeping through content. Knock knock, a new 8 man raid patch with crafted gear that's superior to your current set. Gear is so transient in this game as to be irrelevant as anything but glamour, IMHO. It would be an interesting matter to have a poll on (I miss when Yoshida used these forums for polls), actually... I'm sure I'm probably relatively alone in feeling item level is complete pants, but still. What do people raid for? I'd say to beat a challenge, to play with friends, that sort of thing. "Getting better item level" doesn't remotely register on my radar for that question.

Instead of a Merit System I think I'd prefer a more robust Relic Weapons system, but Lord knows SE will never be able to deliver on that...