Warning: Sleep deprived rambling to follow. Lol, no worries, my last response was the same way.
Seriha wrote:
Well, if we want to dive deep into creative concepts, that actually wouldn't be the only choice for CDC. Rather, look at the jobs who use the WS and then stylize merits out of something they could take advantage of. MP can be useful for PLD, BLU, and RDM sure, but what if while the AM was up everyone else in your party gets their enmity reduced by what you gain? The next BLU spell has a chance to SC with CA? Enfeebles landed are 50% stronger? Babbling much further won't change much on the matter, though.
I see your point, but instead of making one super weapon skill that everyone will use, buff up the other 19 sword weapon skills. Just for an example, allow fast blade to enable the next BLU spell to SC with CA. Allow Burning Blade to absorb MP and Savage Blade to enhance 50% stronger enfeebles. The point is that if you want to have the "Uber damage WS", then that's fine, but that same WS shouldn't be giving you other non-damage enhancements. By allowing gamers to enhance their weaker damage WS's with the aforesaid enhancements, you have now diversified the playing field.
We all see those awesome new weapon skills, but then they become boring rather quickly when an alliance full of DDs are spamming it nonstop. Seriha wrote:
The main point was that if merits were meant to promote some kind of specialization, they can't half-ass it. But you still gotta be careful you just don't create the next cookie cutter craze, which is unfortunately what the current limitations promote. "Merit X or you're an idiot." Enter dilemma where people aren't idiots, but can't merit something because they fancied another job first and don't want to "waste" that investment.
You have it backwards. Although SE could do more to help diversify the playing field, ultimately its' the player base that has been pigeon holing people into cookie cutters. It doesn't matter what SE does, if calculations show a .0001 difference in something between job x and job y, then one of those jobs suck because it isn't the "best" in that category. That totally overlooks the other possible benefits that job could bring.
So, until the player base get out of their "max/min" mentality, they will never see those other benefits, because they are so stuck on "attribute fad A" being at 100%. One day it was maxing out accuracy, then it became maxing out haste. I argued for years on the benefit of magic accuracy. Everyone ridiculed the RDM JSE wise gear for having m.Acc, saying that was wasting gear slots, because we have level 1 merits. Now, everyone and their momma wants M.Acc and will spend top dollar for it even though it's much more available now than before.
Seriha wrote:
But limits equate to stagnation, and stagnation is MMO death. I'm not saying lift the 30 cap. I can appreciate instilling a bit of sanity to the grind in that regard. And for most average people, that's probably a 3 hour or more session, start to finish. I'm more for upping the other freedoms while continuing to build on what's present. But don't stop there, no. Enjoyable content to actually utilize said growth in is also important.
Don't confuse my wants. Just because I'm against unlimited meriting in a certain ability, trait, spell, etc. doesn't mean I don't support new things to play with. I fully support a constant add of new abilities, traits, etc via merit points. My point is that each player should have to make a decision, do I want uber spell x with a weak spell y or do I want a decent spell x and spell y? I'm against a player having UBER everything, which is exactly what the result will be from unlimited stat meriting.
By forcing individuals to think and choose, that's the ultimate way to diversify the game. Whether or not you fall victim to the player base pigeon holing you into a certain set up, that's on you. Think about when level II merits first came out with only 6 merits to use. That was a little extreme, but something along those lines.
Seriha wrote:
Other reasons naturally involved the post-Abyssea slump in content with the seeming return of the old dev ways. My personal job balance issues aside, I saw stagnation. I saw the Empyrean cockblock. I saw VW's crappy reward system. I could flesh out some +2s I'd been slacking on, but then what? Just trudge along for other people with no promise of character growth in the near future? If the resulting counterpoint is that I simply played FFXI too much, that might be true to a degree, but I'm not trying to snub my nose at those who couldn't do the same by holding them to my own personal standards. Merits are something everyone can get. Not everyone has to level every job. I certainly couldn't play 20 jobs at once, but losing out on something because LS Career WHM couldn't log on for the night, so I play filler, is neither fair to myself nor the rest of my LS. We can get by, sure, but it could mean a shift in tactics and maybe someone else also having to play a lesser merited job. sh*t can just roll downhill from there, you know?
This sounds like your problem is more with the over all game itself. That's cool, but merits aren't the answer. Instead of just uncapping merits, SE needs to revisit all of the other side events and make them worthwhile, Besesiged, Campaign, Expeditionary Force, Chocobo racing, Ballista, etc. Have each event provide special tags that when put together allows you access to an ability, uber item, etc.
You don't see it, but the bulk of the issue is with the player base. The second they do a benefit analysis of doing something, anything that falls short is tossed to the side. To counter that, SE has to FORCE players to do a certain thing in order to get something. I would go as far as having a level sync NPC in every old school xp camp (i.e. a NPC in Qufim that allows you to sync from 20-25) where mobs in certain regions at certain levels killed by a party of 6 or less yields a special aforementioned tag.
So many kills, damage points, wins, etc. in Beseiged, Dynamis, Limbus, EF, Campgan, etc. at a certain level yields their own unique tag.
Seriha wrote:
Could be a playstyle thing. I dunno. And we'd never know if the idea is shot down due to a mixed up sense of individuality when it can still exist. Referencing said BLU, for example, I know he didn't carry an INT/MATK and MND set because he didn't believe they were worth it. Hey, look at that, different levels of preparation. He makes that choice, not the game. And hey, maybe I'd like to use Convergence someday, but just as I dislike how RDMs need their full +2 set to do what the Composure bonus should by default, I'm not particularly keen on needing it both a piece of gear and full merits to get the most out of it. Until then, both the JA and gear may as well not exist for me, and that leads to omitting content the more you start adding such examples up.
It is definitely a playing style. Composure should definitely not be that way by default. RDM is and always was a self-buffer.That's why RDM doesn't have AoE spells. The players trying to pigeon hole RDM to be a Pink Mage in order to maximize DDs/buffers is just another example of the max/min mentality.
