All Worlds Maintenance (Jan. 28)

[Spira]

i actually like that the stat merits carry over. the idea that it serves all jobs suits to further customization based on prospective job/subjob combinations.. like cor/sam probably can't appreciate MP merits, but when you're doing something stupid or going WAR/WHM and decide you want to cast reraise suddenly you see what difference it makes.

also if you're leveling a number of jobs (which most people do) you'd want to decide which you want to favor more in the way you spend those points. something that benefits them all, something that only benefits one?

[Cairthenn]

Having limitations for specialization is fine; how bottle-necked WS merit specialization is, however, is not fine.

I'd be less inclined to care if you could easily swap to different weapon skills, but needing 100 merits to max a weaponskill doesn't exactly allow that.

[Kari]

The merit system is, well, garbage in my opinion.

I'd like to see more merit decisions PER JOB, rather than per character.
For example, Group 1/2 merits for our jobs are meant to differentiate one person from another on the same job. However most of the time, those merits have set-in-stone "bests", only varying slightly with some updates.
Then you have every other merit group, which are just bottlenecks that make you slightly worse on non-specialized jobs. Merit WSs being super limiting for people who like to branch out. The new adjustment is nice but...I still see no reason to limit weaponskills.

[Byrthnoth]

I still don't see the point in forcing people to specialize their characters in a game whose single largest strength is the fact that your character is almost infinitely versatile. The merit system is stupid, but if they wanted to add a more-grindy (and invisible) way to improve your character then it's not a bad choice. They just need to uncap the categories.

[Spira]

its not that complicated really.

you said it yourself. the single largest strength in the game is that your character is almost infinitely versatile. almost.
it isn't as if you suddenly have to live with the decision you make for the rest of your in-game characters life. you can always redo all your merits. - but it is a decision you will need to weigh with consideration. the consideration is merely that you cannot have everything at any single point in time, and that if you want to switch merit specializations you'll need time and effort to do it for the same character.

when you consider that most other games in the market use a purely 1 character = 1 class only system, the detriments you claim merit points specialization make in dampening versatility is so trivial that its a joke. and this is before even going into any discussion about racial stat differences.

the bottom line principle is scarcity. you are not supposed to have everything, and you never will. get over it

[Hashmalum]

the bottom line principle is scarcity. you are not supposed to have everything, and you never will. get over it

Says who? Scarcity is an ineradicable principle of the real world, yes, but virtual worlds have whatever laws their creators choose to impose upon them. Scarcity in a game is purely artificial in nature. There's absolutely no need to put it there unless it enhances the play experience in some way. I don't feel that my play experience is enhanced because I have Requiescat and somebody else doesn't. Is yours? I don't understand why some people seem to feel that because something works a certain way in reality that it automatically has to be the same way in the game too. Would the game be better with the need to eat, drink, piss and shit? Without magic? Permadeath? Games are supposed to be escapes from reality, not mindless continuations of it. I agree with Byrth 100% on this one.

[Draylo]

Still no information on cait sith and Atomos either. Will they ever be released?

[Byrthnoth]

its not that complicated really.

you said it yourself. the single largest strength in the game is that your character is almost infinitely versatile. almost.
it isn't as if you suddenly have to live with the decision you make for the rest of your in-game characters life. you can always redo all your merits. - but it is a decision you will need to weigh with consideration. the consideration is merely that you cannot have everything at any single point in time, and that if you want to switch merit specializations you'll need time and effort to do it for the same character.

when you consider that most other games in the market use a purely 1 character = 1 class only system, the detriments you claim merit points specialization make in dampening versatility is so trivial that its a joke. and this is before even going into any discussion about racial stat differences.

the bottom line principle is scarcity. you are not supposed to have everything, and you never will. get over it

I was referring to race when I said "almost," and I'd like to reduce racial differences as well. It's retarded that I can make two 99 empyreans, a relic, and a mythic but not be able to use any of them in the event LS that I run because of a decision that I made a decade ago when I was looking forward to going BLM/RDM and combining Chainspell/Manafont to do totally awesome damage.

Also, you failed to explain why whatever you're talking about is good. How does this forced "scarcity" (which would be more aptly termed forced diversity) enhance the player experience? Why is it good? What makes it useful either to the Dev's bottom line or to players?

[Julian]

Fully agree 100% with Byrth.

This is a game that was designed on versatility, which is one of the great things about it. Merit system just forces people away from that and into limited specialization.

The specialization aspect of the game should be what you focus on doing. For example, you 99 Relic/Mythic/Empys based on what job you're "specializing". Done maxing out a job and want more versatility? Do another. That's the whole fucking point of the game. And capping merits goes completely against that.

[Spira]

Says who? Scarcity is an ineradicable principle of the real world, yes, but virtual worlds have whatever laws their creators choose to impose upon them. Scarcity in a game is purely artificial in nature. There's absolutely no need to put it there unless it enhances the play experience in some way. I don't feel that my play experience is enhanced because I have Requiescat and somebody else doesn't. Is yours? I don't understand why some people seem to feel that because something works a certain way in reality that it automatically has to be the same way in the game too. Would the game be better with the need to eat, drink, piss and shit? Without magic? Permadeath? Games are supposed to be escapes from reality, not mindless continuations of it. I agree with Byrth 100% on this one.

you are deluded.
if the broad principle of scarcity naturally applies to the real world, what makes you think a virtual world can function without it? it just will not work.
Put it another way - yes. Scarcity in the game is artificial, but imagine if it weren't. The antithesis of scarcity in such a situation is where everyone has everything on every metric (levels, gil, mission progress, items) in-game and doesn't desire to have anything else. Practically speaking, its homogeneity.. but what fun would that be to play? There would be NOTHING to achieve. If there is nothing to desire or want within a game, there is no reason to play it.

Look to MMOs which have private servers where players can hack and have everything they want. See how well those work out? Or you can just look to the test server. People go in there for cheap thrills, free legendary gear like mythics and can easily max out pretty much everything. But the value of anything there is non-existent.

To get to Byrth's question, scarcity functions not to enhance the players experience of the game but to give the game a purpose by giving people a reason to play. It is the reason why time-sinks like event timers exist. It is the fundamental principle that make MMORPGs work.

The moment you take scarcity out of the equation - you lose the interest of the player. The moment players can have everything, they would lose interest. But this isn't some universal scale that everyone follows - it works differently for everyone.
Look to how people quit because there's no content left for them to do. Look to how people used to quit after investing all their time to fund a relic weapon. Look to how some people only play when a new patch arrives to experience the new content and then stop once that's done.

The merit system functions as one aspect of creating scarcity by forcing people to pick a limited number out of a bunch of choices. It may not by itself be the metric that promotes desire to play the game but is one of the many that exist. I honestly don't know anyone who was genuinely happy about having to grind merits to unlock their weapon skills - but everyone seems to do it.

You don't need to feel that your play experience is enhanced because you have Requiescat and someone else doesn't. It is enhanced because you have it and you didn't have it before.

[Hitou]

I think there should be caps on merits, but I think the current ones are too restrictive. Most notably WS, Combat skill and Magic skill. Job specific are w/e, everyone picks the same thing anyway. Other, same thing. Attribute you could argue both ways, it's nice that you're not limited to just one anymore. I wouldn't be against being able to cap everything, but there wouldn't be much point to it besides to spend excess EXP, and once you've capped everything you'd still be in the same boat. If they were to remove the cap limit entirely, they might as well remove merits and just spread them out per level.

Not being able to use WS like shattersoul or apex arrow for fun because it would mean gimping useful WS is lame. The proposed changes to 1 merit into a WS is good, but without raising the cap it's meaningless for 99% of players. They wouldn't even have to raise it a full multiple of 5, could raise it to 16-19 and you'd be able to merit 1-4 extra ws without changing the limit of 3 full powered WS.

[Chamaan]

I want that change they mentioned where first merit into a WS would give a 60% mod and +5% for each merit after. Make if worthwhile to do a single in a few for fuckaround jobs.

[Yugl]

Yes, merits is what makes scarcity felt within this game. Not the fact that optimally playing any class would require tons of gear/inventory, not the fact not everyone has every class 99, not the fact that few have macros/XMLs suited to play every 99, or every other aspect of that game that limits Mr.Round-The-Vana-Classes from playing every class optimally. Merits and only merits.

[arus2001]

I like Rift's Planar Attunement system as their equivalent of merits, really. You can max everything, just gotta play enough. And ultimately, that's where the snowflakes are coming from when they demand the caps. Just because they're a "career whatever" they feel like they should be a better player than someone who spent the time basically making everything good.

Then there's the fact a large number of merits simply don't get touched due to their inferiority to other options within the same category. I feel like it'd be easier for SE to balance future content with "full or no merits" in mind than the mish-mash they got going now.

[Darkmagi]

It's completely retarded that a lot of relic/mythic weapons being good are almost always completely dependent on you having the merit ws, it's really depressing that I basically have to storage a relic when I get rid of the merit ws I had for it that makes it good.

[Economizer]

I still don't see the point in forcing people to specialize their characters in a game whose single largest strength is the fact that your character is almost infinitely versatile. The merit system is stupid, but if they wanted to add a more-grindy (and invisible) way to improve your character then it's not a bad choice. They just need to uncap the categories.

This was true when you posted the reasons to the dev team, it's true now, and will be true in the future, as is all the other backing arguments. The racial stat differences play into this too.

Honestly, let's say one day I found I could force the dev team to do whatever I wanted for the game overall.

Spoiler: show

Aside from changing policy on third party tools to work with the community where possible and crack down on rule breaking where it isn't like other big MMO producers do, merits would probably be the next big thing to see changes.

Job specific and weapon skill categories would be uncapped, as would Combat Skills, Magic Skills, and the Other Category.

Enmity would be removed from the Other Category, and moved into its own category. This category would still have a cap of 5, as would HP/MP, and Attributes, which would retain current caps. Players would be able to change them between universal and job specific however, with all players starting out with a universal default, and changing to job specific would clone the default for all jobs, and reverting would lose all merits except for one job chosen.

Future merit categories would be guaranteed to be uncapped as a promise to players, however getting more merits past a certain amount would cost exponentially more experience points. Thus, you'd have the illusion of caps, but you could grind past them with more and more work. Alternatively it could cost Conquest Points, Allied Notes, or Imperial Standing depending on where you'd want to add incentive experience point gathering to unlock new categories, if you really want players to grind.

The first major new merit category would be "Racial Merits" which would be race specific. Their sole purpose would be to make difference races homogeneously powerful, so for example, a Galka's merits would be mostly unlocking more MP and CHR and a bit of stats here or there that a Galka is missing, whereas say a Hume would just be boosting a bit of every stat across the board. The merit options in this category would probably be named after the races or something relevant, and be tied to the races, so Hume merits for CHR, Galka merits for VIT/HP, Elvaan merits for STR/MND, Mithra merits for DEX/AGI, Tarutaru merits for INT/MP.

These would be tied to beating an expansion, probably Chains of Promanthia since it would make sense, and would take a small quest to unlock. This would gate out most players into having races still be important enough for any reasonable sticklers, but anyone arguing that breaking the in-game reason for different races having setbacks after a long drawn out ordeal and lots of work probably didn't want to be reasonable in the first place and thus can be ignored. This would strengthen players out so SE could delay other forms of power inflation with this as a time sink, and balance races so SE doesn't have to design around it, while having lazy players and dual box characters eat it on stat differences.

Future merit categories could then be much easier to design, since you could not have to worry about balancing something like "Haste Samba" with "Step Accuracy", but instead having obvious choices that everyone will grab first, then bonus choices that players can get if they're very dedicated to the job. If that wasn't enough grind, SE could also make Job Specific, Group III/IV be individually unlocked after doing some job specific quest to further cater to "special flowers" and "career X" players without totally screwing over anyone who just wants versatility, no matter how much work it takes.

Of course, this would all be done after LISTENING to player feedback, although I'm partial to ignoring people who want the game to permanently penalize players for making past choices. It is one thing to punish players temporarily for a decision, that happens, but non-banning punishments should never be permanent in a game that is played continuously, it is just bad design.

TL;DR: Merits would change big time, with widespread removal of caps for the most part, and a new merit category players can unlock that removes the differences between races in exchange for a lot of work to do so.

[Kincard]

I like the idea of specialization, I don't like the way it's done with merit WS where if certain classes lack certain WS then you basically can't play the job effectively unless you have a REM. That's dumb that a tertiary job I'm leveling can't come out benchwarming simply because I'm not willing to spend another 15 hours farming another Empyrean, 150M getting a relic or drop WS merits so that my primary job is now handicapped.

I like the idea of specialization more when it supplements what the class can do. See: RDM Group 2s, I think those were a better way of implementing diversity without totally crippling your job if you didn't have a certain one. Phalanx II, Bio III and Paralyze II all had their uses, but you can't have all of them at once, and it wasn't going to ruin a run even if you didn't have any of them.

[fantasticdan]

I like the idea of specialization, I don't like the way it's done with merit WS where if certain classes lack certain WS then you basically can't play the job effectively unless you have a REM. That's dumb that a tertiary job I'm leveling can't come out benchwarming simply because I'm not willing to spend another 15 hours farming another Empyrean, 150M getting a relic or drop WS merits so that my primary job is now handicapped.

As far as relics/mythics go, that's only the case for ryu/KKK and arguable apoc. All the rest depend on merit ws afaik.

[Cairthenn]

I don't see why they can't release weaponskills that are at least close to the Merit WS as native weaponskills. Outside of the aforementioned weapons, and various Empyrean weapon skills, the only useful WS are the merit ones. They definitely put no thought into how they set that up - it's basically "I need the merit WS or (sometimes) the Empyrean weapon".

[noodles355]

As far as relics/mythics go, that's only the case for ryu/KKK and arguable apoc. All the rest depend on merit ws afaik.

Yoichi and Anni arguably. Also Mandau maybe (at 99)