I think it's fairly obvious that people only care about ranks and therefor merit for signature space. The higher rank you are the bigger signature you have and the easier it is to get onto a signature campaign therefor more money you can potentially earn. It's probably like wondering why do people care about more qualifications or being a higher position in a company. More money and respect is the answer. I do have to agree with op however that the rank requirements are probably excessive.... or maybe not excessive but due to the little merit people send to others because of its scarcity it's very hard to achieve high ranking. Personally I don't really care about  merit as I'm lucky enough to have been early in the game to get airdropped the required amount to become Hero which is a level many new users will likely struggle to achieve, but I rarely receive merit from people and I don't believe it's because my posts are bad.... far from it. In the past 120 days I've received 11 merit. Because I receive little merit I can send little on to others so I'm limited in that respect and I think that's the same case with everyone else. I've sent my only two remaining merit to two users in this thread but personally I think there's many others in this thread that also deserve it (some moreso) and that I would have merited had I been able to. Maybe there are other factors involved in sending merit however. Maybe it's because I don't really need it that people are less likely to send it to me and save it for those that need it more, but on the flipside I wonder how I would get on if I made a new account from scratch but made the same sort of posts.  How long would it take me to achieve Hero then?? I think I would struggle personally but that's something I'm not willing or care enough to try find out  .  The merit system doesn't seem to be set in stone so I'm sure the limits could be ajusted in the future if they're clearly too difficult to achieve.


I don't think it's as simple as that. There are sure a a lot of people who don't deserve much merit complaining about it but I also think there's a lot of users that also go overlooked and even active users who contribute a lot will maybe nebver achieve Legednary or take many years to do it.


I think there's a third too: The ones who were here before the merit system and achieved rank without achieving merit and therefor have nothing to complain about. Some people will have deserved their rank from prior posts but others certainly haven't and it was just the luck of being an early adopter for them. I don't think the merit system is perfect and it's healthy to constructively criticize it's positives and negatives and suggest improvements. A sweet spot should try to be found if it hasn't already but that is certainly open for debate).


I agree with you. Some boards obviously recieve more merit than others and its potluck as to whether you receive any at all.