Square Enix and us people.

[Kyreth]

be that as it may, the cockblocking of 3 years in dragons aery and the stranglehold that RMT has on sky is 100x worse than at least having the option to go elsewhere. I'm sure an inventive way of getting around pricks is possible. Assaults are, if i'm not mistaken, a form of instancing. Not saying that it is the correct or even practical way it should be handled but they HAVE dabbled in that idea with ToAU. The Dynamis model could also be used, have an item that is buyable or obtained in some way and when used can be given to others to allow entry to battlefields etc. as long as it is not obtained in a way that can be monopolized by any person or group of people.

-Draxy

If you think that's bad, try imagining one linkshell cockblocking everyone else from getting past the middle of the CoP mission chain. That's the sort of thing a "must have X lewts to progress" requirement causes in MMORPG's.

Or, to make it clearer- imagine if the Ulli clusterfuck meant you couldn't do anything new until you DID get your Autumnstone, cause you needed a flag from beating that god.

[Draxy]

be that as it may, the cockblocking of 3 years in dragons aery and the stranglehold that RMT has on sky is 100x worse than at least having the option to go elsewhere. I'm sure an inventive way of getting around pricks is possible. Assaults are, if i'm not mistaken, a form of instancing. Not saying that it is the correct or even practical way it should be handled but they HAVE dabbled in that idea with ToAU. The Dynamis model could also be used, have an item that is buyable or obtained in some way and when used can be given to others to allow entry to battlefields etc. as long as it is not obtained in a way that can be monopolized by any person or group of people.

-Draxy

If you think that's bad, try imagining one linkshell cockblocking everyone else from getting past the middle of the CoP mission chain. That's the sort of thing a "must have X lewts to progress" requirement causes in MMORPG's.

Or, to make it clearer- imagine if the Ulli clusterfuck meant you couldn't do anything new until you DID get your Autumnstone, cause you needed a flag from beating that god.

If something like that occurred that would just be piss poor planning. Just don't build something into it that would allow someone to do that and the problem is solved. Everyone does some random retarded mission like getting your miasma filter to obtain a key item (once every 3 days quest is available or something like that). Now the raid leader buys an item or gets an item from an NPC and makes copies of it and passes it out to his cronies. Everyone has the key item which is something people cannot monopolize (like the miasma filter key item, mine shaft lever, limbus soap, or hell even make the key item drop from the final boss in the previous encounter) and an item that identifies them as being a part of _____'s raid group. Everyone enters and then a lockout is in effect for those players after they leave which lasts x hours at which point they can redo the quest or whatever. done. Its really not an issue, look at limbus or dynamis. Its impossible to monopolize it unless you camp the flowers that drop the cards 24/7 365, and even that would be an easy fix by moving the item somewhere else.

[Khamsin]

be that as it may, the cockblocking of 3 years in dragons aery and the stranglehold that RMT has on sky is 100x worse than at least having the option to go elsewhere. I'm sure an inventive way of getting around pricks is possible. Assaults are, if i'm not mistaken, a form of instancing. Not saying that it is the correct or even practical way it should be handled but they HAVE dabbled in that idea with ToAU. The Dynamis model could also be used, have an item that is buyable or obtained in some way and when used can be given to others to allow entry to battlefields etc. as long as it is not obtained in a way that can be monopolized by any person or group of people.

-Draxy

If you think that's bad, try imagining one linkshell cockblocking everyone else from getting past the middle of the CoP mission chain. That's the sort of thing a "must have X lewts to progress" requirement causes in MMORPG's.

Or, to make it clearer- imagine if the Ulli clusterfuck meant you couldn't do anything new until you DID get your Autumnstone, cause you needed a flag from beating that god.

Yeah, imagine if you needed to kill Byakko in order to get to Kirin. How awful would that be, no one would ever kill Kirin.

And what I was saying earlier was that if you are going to instance things, may as well put in gear progression too for fun. Why not make it so you need X gear to take on the next tier of HNM, if they're all instanced?

[Eireann]

Not sure if this has been covered! I apologize in advance there are sooo many articles and I'm about to go home for the day at work. But I thought of a way to deal with Meriting perhaps - I'm sure someone may have thought of this idea as well - but with so many people having multiple Lv.75 jobs, it sucks when you can't merit additional weapons.

Say, If you have 8 on dagger and then you get WAR or RNG, you have nothing to work with. There should be a way to also merit that specific category for each job and only benefit while on that job. So, you could then merit your Axe 8 times, Marksmanship but only get full credit when that job is active.

Of course, that would suck for benefiting on your merits at lower levels but I think it'd be a fair trade off. If we could merit each weapon and have all those skills on any job that'd make us a bit too powerful.

So in a nutshell, I'd like to see 8 merits per job at 75 so you can cap out the appropriate weapon skill modifications. Besides, I don't think anyone would miss out on dagger while their main is WAR or MNK XD.

**edit** yes, please, make ulli spawn every hour or something D: i hate that fuggin NM. The only satisfaction i get from that room is the possibility of Hide/Aggro'ing golems onto AFK gilsellers!!

[FFXIFlux]

Not sure if this has been covered! I apologize in advance there are sooo many articles and I'm about to go home for the day at work. But I thought of a way to deal with Meriting perhaps - I'm sure someone may have thought of this idea as well - but with so many people having multiple Lv.75 jobs, it sucks when you can't merit additional weapons.

Yep, it's a big design oops. A game where you can switch jobs but can only have merits (and in some cases gear, ala supanomimi) for one or a few of them. Sort of a big "haha, fooled you, you can only really have one good job" once you get to 75. That should be fixed along with the ability to request avatar rewards and other EX items.

[BRP]

Not sure if this has been covered! I apologize in advance there are sooo many articles and I'm about to go home for the day at work. But I thought of a way to deal with Meriting perhaps - I'm sure someone may have thought of this idea as well - but with so many people having multiple Lv.75 jobs, it sucks when you can't merit additional weapons.

Yep, it's a big design oops. A game where you can switch jobs but can only have merits (and in some cases gear, ala supanomimi) for one or a few of them. Sort of a big "haha, fooled you, you can only really have one good job" once you get to 75. That should be fixed along with the ability to request avatar rewards and other EX items.

Then again in a game where its almost impossible to be unique and strong at once, what can you expect? Merit points are pretty much meant to make people different, even if it's a bother.

[Tahngarthor]

I thought the whole idea behind merit points was to specialize...

[FFXIFlux]

I thought the whole idea behind merit points was to specialize...

The idea behind merit points was to spend minimal development effort to have people spend more hours grinding XP in the same spots without having to raise the level cap or make new XP spots with higher level mobs.

[Lithiani]

His point was that required gear progression would make people move "up" through a series of NMs. My point was that people fighting the higher tier NMs would deliberately overfarm earlier NMs to cockblock the competition. He then claimed that instancing would prevent this. I simply make the point that if you are instancing, why do you need to relate progression to gear?

Challenge. If a fight is so difficult it's practically impossible without gear upgrades, it's a good thing. Whats the point of killing things for drops if you can kill everything in the game bare naked? I'm going to take a wild guess that you aren't 100% naked in dynamis or at HNMs and you put some effort into getting better gear. Haveing fights that require it is one of the main point for getting that gear.

I agree with your point, but I don't agree with his - the concept that one must have X item(s) to even think about killing Y NM is rather akin to requiring people to have level 30, 40, 50 and 60 gears to hand to do CoP missions, because CoP mission level cap equips were such a popular choice, amirite?

If you are going to instance things, then instancing things alone will make progression through a series of instances occur. Gear dependency doesn't add anything to instanced content beyond massive irritation and inv space -20.

[FFXIFlux]

I agree with your point, but I don't agree with his - the concept that one must have X item(s) to even think about killing Y NM is rather akin to requiring people to have level 30, 40, 50 and 60 gears to hand to do CoP missions, because CoP mission level cap equips were such a popular choice, amirite?

No. And level capped zones are handled poorly.

If you are going to instance things, then instancing things alone will make progression through a series of instances occur. Gear dependency doesn't add anything to instanced content beyond massive irritation and inv space -20.

No. First, the entire game isn't instanced. Second even if everything was instanced, gear still provides a finer granularity than a yes/no key flag for having passed a previous instanced zone. Gear also provides a visual indicator of a character's achievement and gives players the warm fuzzy feeling a key item never will.

[Lordender]

not to get off topic but didn't everquest have some sort of merit like system that wasent very popular?

I still think the meriting system needs to be redone, limiting people to cap 1 combat skill is pretty lame imo.

[Artemuller]

Not sure if this has been covered! I apologize in advance there are sooo many articles and I'm about to go home for the day at work. But I thought of a way to deal with Meriting perhaps - I'm sure someone may have thought of this idea as well - but with so many people having multiple Lv.75 jobs, it sucks when you can't merit additional weapons.

Say, If you have 8 on dagger and then you get WAR or RNG, you have nothing to work with. There should be a way to also merit that specific category for each job and only benefit while on that job. So, you could then merit your Axe 8 times, Marksmanship but only get full credit when that job is active.

Of course, that would suck for benefiting on your merits at lower levels but I think it'd be a fair trade off. If we could merit each weapon and have all those skills on any job that'd make us a bit too powerful.

So in a nutshell, I'd like to see 8 merits per job at 75 so you can cap out the appropriate weapon skill modifications. Besides, I don't think anyone would miss out on dagger while their main is WAR or MNK XD.

I agree. In my situation one of my characters has sword and axe merits for my war, but due to the limitations of combat skills I am unable to excel in other areas like katana and scythe skill for my other jobs. Would definitely ask the developers if combat skills merit category could be adjusted based on main job active.

[PussPuss]

They should just split up the combat skills category into like defenseive combat skills (evasion, parrying, shield, ect) and offensive with the same merit cap on each. It wont make it so you could do everything, but you could do more. Either that or have them refund your damn merits when you lower something so you could change up based on what job you are.

[levish]

or just simply leave the per weapon type cap in place and remove the category cap

it's not like war with polearm will be overpowered or anything with +16 polearm skill

:3

The kracken Drks are probably already +16 club skill and ridill wars +16 sword skill, not like adding in +8 more skill to the 4 upgrades in axe they might have would be game shattering.

If anything you might start seeing something other than thieves with daggers, like maybe, gasp, gun thieves.

[layoneil]

And what I was saying earlier was that if you are going to instance things, may as well put in gear progression too for fun. Why not make it so you need X gear to take on the next tier of HNM, if they're all instanced?

because this is actually a dumb thing to ask for. you're practically bending over when you ask for this.

here's an example, Ouryu > Bahamut v2. for the most part that's as close as we have got to instanced progression.

now imagine if it's literally impossible to beat Bahamut v2 without at least 1 DRK in full Plastron/Black gear. you just locked your LS into farming Ouryu a whole bunch of times unnecessarily when you already have a Monarch Orb.

obviously, each progression you go up the chain you want better gear. but if it's "necessary gear" than that's just a cockblock to make you farm the lower levels longer than you really have/want to.

[Heian]

Not sure if this has been covered! I apologize in advance there are sooo many articles and I'm about to go home for the day at work. But I thought of a way to deal with Meriting perhaps - I'm sure someone may have thought of this idea as well - but with so many people having multiple Lv.75 jobs, it sucks when you can't merit additional weapons.

Say, If you have 8 on dagger and then you get WAR or RNG, you have nothing to work with. There should be a way to also merit that specific category for each job and only benefit while on that job. So, you could then merit your Axe 8 times, Marksmanship but only get full credit when that job is active.

Of course, that would suck for benefiting on your merits at lower levels but I think it'd be a fair trade off. If we could merit each weapon and have all those skills on any job that'd make us a bit too powerful.

So in a nutshell, I'd like to see 8 merits per job at 75 so you can cap out the appropriate weapon skill modifications. Besides, I don't think anyone would miss out on dagger while their main is WAR or MNK XD.

I agree. In my situation one of my characters has sword and axe merits for my war, but due to the limitations of combat skills I am unable to excel in other areas like katana and scythe skill for my other jobs. Would definitely ask the developers if combat skills merit category could be adjusted based on main job active.

It would be even better if they just put weapon skill cap upgrades with the jobs that have the A ratings or higher.

For example.

Under PLD merits you would have

Sword
Shield
Club
Staff

NIN would have

Katana
Evasion
Parry

If it worked something along those lines that would be awesome, that way you could cap all your jobs and not just one. Oh and SE if you read this guess what its way more of a time sink so that means more 12.95+ a month for you.

EDIT: This would all add to your character though, so it could be slightly overpowering but god forbid if FFXI has real progression.

[layoneil]

if they did that, Ridill WARs wouldn't be able to merit Sword without leveling PLD to 75 first.

[Kurp]

if they did that, Ridill WARs wouldn't be able to merit Sword without leveling PLD to 75 first.

Also, no job could merit String, Wind, or Singing skill.

[layoneil]

Also, no job could merit String, Wind, or Singing skill.

you say that as if people actually do that now.

[Heian]

if they did that, Ridill WARs wouldn't be able to merit Sword without leveling PLD to 75 first.

Not saying its perfect but its an idea where they could go. Personally I think they should have split the defensive skills and the offensive skill into two seperate menus completly, then be allowed to do ten upgrades on both menus.

Its clear thats its way to late to increase the level cap but to keep people interested they will have to keep expanding merits so who knows what they will end up doing. So far any change they made to merit points hasn't been bad.