Merits are important for those people who value it and to those people who respect this forum.. Yes merit is useless outside the forum but neither the forum care for the rules in the outside world. This forum has set its own rules and its own merit system and for us beginners merits is a prize or a trophy that gets us motivated each day to make and create more meaningful topics that will help our fellow users and this forum..

For me here is my reason why merit is important:
1. Merits give me an awesome feeling of motivation the merit in me that has been provided by those merit giver makes me more inspire to create more useful topics and useful replies.
2. (Real Fact) Merits is I need to get ranked up high so I can be able to use signatures and has more stakes in signature bounties
3. Merits shows how active and useful you are in the forum. This shows that you don't make only this forum for spam bounties but you are contributing even a little in the forum.
4. Merits is also a "kodus" that you might give to someone that contributed a meaningful topic or replies in the forum
5. Merits decreases the spambies and creates more meaningful threads and replies in this forum
6. Merit is far more everything that completes your profile !

That are some of my major reasons why merits is important so don't think that merit is useless merit is one of the biggest changes that this forum has created and it helps a lot !