[levish]

I am the worlds biggest fan of meriting, but what happens when we desire to level a job that the original merit application no longer compliments?

i.e.

You start out as a PLD meriting up your shiney new job at 75 and you proceed to merit sword skill / crit rate down / enimity increase and all the other nice tank specific upgrades.

You now decide to go out and play a DRK, so not only are a large portion of your merits useless, they are actually detrimental in some cases.

Do you waste all the upgrades in +Enimity?
Do you gimp your gear to compensate?
Do you erase all your +sword skill merits and put in +greatsword merits after going out and getting another 300,000 experience points worth of merits?

Let's not even speak of the stat's merits or the HP vs. MP merits

Wouldn't it be nice if you could just when Lowering a merit, get the points returned to you? Weren't they mine to begin with? Couldn't I have spent them on that category to begin with?

I'm not asking to be allowed to assign them on any categories, but since the limits per categories are so strict, let us reassign them ...

I don't need to be proficient with a Katanna and a Scythe at the same time, but it sure would be nice to know that the months i spent capping Katanna didn't go to waste when I realized my new calling is Thief yay Dagger and Marksmanship unavailable because someone has 8 upgrades in Katanna and 4 in evasion.

Heaven forbid we actually make use of one of the most brilliant things FF has to offer: The job change function.

[Akai]

thats a fantastic idea, id love to see it happen :x currently i have an enmity merit, h2h, and a HP merit id like to get rid of, but i cant bring myself to lower it :/ they should add this, or alteast get half of the merits used :/

[BurningPanther]

Oh, I am so in support of this idea. It should have been implemented with the introduction of merits.

[Balodoth]

Would paying one merit point for compensation of the others be acceptable?

[levish]

not sure what you mean?

the problems:

1. meriting X prevents you from meriting Y
if you deleved X to now merit Y, you now have to get all the merit points again that you spent on X again for Y.

2. leveling JobB coming from merited job A makes job B more difficult with merits than easier, you cannot for the most part erase these merits because Job A is your main endgame job, JobB is something new you are having fun with.

3. you have 8 upgrades in katanna (ninja only) and go off to level samurai and it benefits you precisely 0% because you have no skill in katanna. If you could reasssign, you could take your 8 upgrades in katanna and make them G Katanna upgrades and put them back to Katanna upgrades when you need to go back to Nin.

Furthermore, I'd rather there be some reasonable monetary sum paid for reassignment than more xp, or maybe some miniquest?

[Neomage]

I like this idea. Personally, I understand why SE made it so you lose merits if you take them away:

1) So you spend more time playing.

2) If you spend time focusing on your dagger skills, it dosn't just poof into katana.

However:

1) SE dosn't realize that my letting players exchange merits, they would actually level more jobs because they aren't faced with loseing/gaining/losing/gaining just to switch jobs once.

2) Vana D'. is a place with magic and abilitys running wild. Merits could actually be considered ability catalysts rather than skills.

3) SE could also comprimise - You can't empty say, Sword Skill with 8 merits in it and use the 8 merits again, but they could let you take out all but the last merit, and have 7 merits to spend. If the final sword merit was taken away(the base catalyst) you would not gain merits from it.

[Khevn]

Most if not all Merits are only active if your 75, so while lvling that other job, enmity +1 or - and MP and HP + will not take a effect until that new said job is 75. So in no way while you are lvling a new job will merits hinder that, because you simply can't use them unless your 75. Merits Are simply there, from my point of view, as way to Specialize your primary job class even further. It looks to me like it's SE's way of rewarding someone who continues to play 1 specific job. So if your changing your main and you gotta work for your merits agian and thats why your complaining, then your not gonna see much sympathy. The point of not making it so you can specialize in every job is that you need to rely on ther people. Rather than make it so with enough time everyone can be Mr. Jack of all Trades uber. If you could do that you might as well make the game Diablo-esque where you just jump on a server with people you want to play exclusively because you can all do anything anyways, you just need everyone to be this or that specifically, for that said monster or mission.

[levish]

thank you for your support, just some little things

1. I can spend more time doing other things than just getting merit points, especially for those of us at the point where merits are of particularly high usefulness

2. so what if you move merits from one category to another, it's not like you go from having 8 upgrades in katanna to having 8 upgrades in dagger at the same time. but it does let you have the option of testing:

how 0 merits in katanna + 8 merits in dagger works out for nin
how 4 merits in 1 handed axe and 8 merits in sword work for ridill warriors
how 4 upgrades in evasion work for you compared to 8 in marksmanship and 4 in dagger for soloing as thief

I could go on forever, but it basically lets people be flexible rather than restricted.

I got those 300k experience points for combat once, if I change my mind, why do i have to get them again?

and Khevin that is not correct, most merits take effect at level 10 and carry on upgrading from there.

[Khevn]

What specific merits are those? I have +4 enmity +8 sword + 40 hp and i just got chivalry, when I switch to my whm lvl 37 the Hp's are no higher than before i merited my, pld, I don't pull hate when i'm on my BLM anymore than i normally do, and my sword skill when when I switch jobs is non existent. So which merits specifically are there that stay after 10 and up when i play another job that isn't 75?

[tdh]

I like the notion behind this, but how about another suggestion?

We currently have a Combat Skill Merit Category. How about allowing us to Merit weapons and Skills for a specific job. A lot of us have multiple Lv.75 jobs, or are plan on taking more jobs to Lv.75.

Example A
Job 1: THF75
Job 2: WAR75
Job 3: NIN75
Job 4: RNG75

So Enmity + might help NIN & THF, but doesn't help WAR & RNG at all. Crit Hit % helps all 4, but if they decide to Merit a weapon they're sadly limited. Katana Merits would greatly help, but he's doing HNM & Dynamis as RNG 85% of the time. Having additional Archery Merits would help him there though.

Example B
Job 1: RDM75
Job 2: DRK75
Job 3: WAR75
Job 4: SAM75

This is my eventual dream. Sword Merits wouldn't hurt RDM soloing & WAR if I decide to off hand a Sword. But I will want Axe Merits, Great Sword Merits, Scythe Merits, and Great Katana Merits. It's almost to the point where putting Merits into these many weapons won't actually afford me anything. I'd ~like~ to have fully Merit'd Axes & Great Katana, but under the current system that's not possible.

So add another sub Combat Group to the jobs for their specialty weapon. PLD, NIN, WAR, and THF would have Enmity + options. SAM would have the option to Merit Great Katana, DRK GS & Scythe, then give Mages and other DD jobs Enmity - options. That way they don't interfere with the other Merits, and would keep us leveling and playing even longer.

This way my friend in Example A can merit Enmity for NIN & THF, and then lower his Enmity for his DD jobs. And in Example B for myself, I can cap our Great Katana for end game activites, and still have the same for WAR & DRK. (Provided I can even do things in end game as something other than RDM! lol)

Perhaps even do the same for Magic Skills. Another friend I know has BRD, WHM, BLM, and RDM all at Lv.75. If she caps Enfeebling, she can't do the same for Healing Magic, Elemental Magic, or BRD skills. Personally I would love to be able to cap Dark Magic for DRK, but Enfeebling magic is far more important to me for RDM.

[csBahamut]

I am personally against this. Limiting what merits you can have, and how one wants to boost their jobs at 75 adds some uniqueness to every character. As it is, each job has an almost set best equipment set. the only reason there's any variation in gear between players of the same job is because of race differences, and availability. While it would be nice to be able to get merits for all the jobs I would want to play, it kind of defeats the purpose of having slight differences between all players. It says something about me when I put merits towards my PLD first and formost. Even then, the merits I choose to use for PLD are probably different from another PLD due to my playstyle and other jobs I'm leveling.

Besides, SE already has this implimented in a limited sense with the Job specific categories.

[Climhazzard]

I've always thought we should've been able to do this merits. But, I also don't think we should be allowed to change our merits around in the same job just to fit the situation we're in.


An example of what I am saying:

If I'm playing BST and I decide to sub SAM because I want to use Spirits Within while fighting an HNM, but I capped MP merits because MP helps me out more most of the time, I should not be allowed to switch my merits from MP to HP just to fit the situation without some sort of major penalty.

Now, if I decide to change my job to MNK, then I think I should be able to take my MP merits and change them to another, more benefitting merit.

I think the way merits are now make us actually think before we decide what merit to use and I think that aspect needs to stay. I'm a firm believer in that and if I chose the wrong merit or upgrade, then I've got no one to blame but myself. But, with FFXI, where we use the same character to play every job, some merits hurt another job and I think we should be able to reassign merits when we choose to play a different job but not allowing merit reassignment on the same job.

[levish]

Originally Posted by Climhazzard

I've always thought we should've been able to do this merits. But, I also don't think we should be allowed to change our merits around in the same job just to fit the situation we're in.


An example of what I am saying:

If I'm playing BST and I decide to sub SAM because I want to use Spirits Within while fighting an HNM, but I capped MP merits because MP helps me out more most of the time, I should not be allowed to switch my merits from MP to HP just to fit the situation without some sort of major penalty.

Now, if I decide to change my job to MNK, then I think I should be able to take my MP merits and change them to another, more benefitting merit.

I think the way merits are now make us actually think before we decide what merit to use and I think that aspect needs to stay. I'm a firm believer in that and if I chose the wrong merit or upgrade, then I've got no one to blame but myself. But, with FFXI, where we use the same character to play every job, some merits hurt another job and I think we should be able to reassign merits when we choose to play a different job but not allowing merit reassignment on the same job.

o_O

so you are suggesting that the only way to change your assigned merits would be to level up two jobs to 75 and then be able to reassign them?

and why should anyone have to be "to blame" for a decision you've changed your mind on?

and why should anyone have to then go out and get another 300k xp because of that decision?

[Climhazzard]

Originally Posted by levish

o_O

so you are suggesting that the only way to change your assigned merits would be to level up two jobs to 75 and then be able to reassign them?

Unfortunately, that's the way it works out. In order to reassign merits, the player would have to have at least two 75 jobs before they could reassign them.

and why should anyone have to be "to blame" for a decision you've changed your mind on?

and why should anyone have to then go out and get another 300k xp because of that decision?

Because people should think before they act. We're given enough information to know what we want to merit be it from the actual merit description given in the game, to other players offering descriptions and their own opinions on a merit. I don't think one job should be able to reassign merit points because, as another poster said, it adds a unique quality to the character and FFXI needs a LOT more of this.

I think we should just be happy that we can delete a merit and go get some limit points to place that merit in another category. In some MMOs, players can allot stat points. They gain these points with every new level gained. But, once they're added in these other MMOs, those points cannot be taken away. They're there permanently. I remember Warriors in EQOA loading up on STR and DEX points with every new point they got. They later complained about it saying they "didn't know any better" because they couldn't tank worth a flip. The job description and abilities clearly show Warriors as a tank.

[levish]

I guess everyone's entitled to a opinion however the counterpoint is that the more popular games allow "talent respecs"

not sure what anyone stands to gain from having to go out and grind more xp other than SE in wasting our time.