One merit is nothing for juniors. It would be far better to restrict newbies and juniors to starter boards, and leave the merit system alone.

Animated avatars would be a nightmare, If they are introduced, then please provide a method to disable them.

Removing merits from deleted posts would be a tremendous advantage in my opinion.

I'm not too bothered about badges or higher ranks.

Allowing a compact jpeg or png banner in a sig would be great, but charging for it would mean that only the spammers would use it. I think it would be far better to allow it for contributions to the stability of the forum.