personally me think merit system should not be there and ranks should be done via there post counts and quality of its posts
Don't think that merit is a big hindrance on leveling up , make it as a motivation though , I know it's hard leveling up or ranking up , but then again.
Merit applied because it has benefits not just on the forum but to our self such as , we can practice saying and writing english , and we can improve the way we write though.
Still you should be thankful than complaining.
Hey dude, how are you in our position the new users after knowing the merit system? Maybe you're an old user and I know this merit system is new. Surely the old users do not need to scavenge merit because at their current rank is sufficient. New users complain about this because of the unfairness of this system. For example I see a lot of old users make spam post (in my opinion) but given merit. We complain because it is unfair to this merit system. Following the challenge merit any newbie fear. For fear of being mistaken for spammers etc.