I think that members should only be allowed to award one point per post. It is already apparent that the sig spammers and account farmers are picking up 30-50 points a time for rubbish posts.
I also recommend to allow maximum 5 sMerits per post, this will help to reduce such abuse.
It's not a solution to all the forum's problems but it now at least stops people from creating multiple accounts and just shitposting with them to rank up. Now if you don't put some effort in you will get no where. More restrictions/punishments need to be put on badly run campaigns though otherwise little will change regarding the quality of posts here.
Yes, it has destroyed the dreams of account farmers and shit posters. Introduction of new ranking and merit system is a good initiative to make this forum better for the community. More such actions should be taken frequently in order to control the quality of this forum.
I think the new system is a bad idea. I really don't think people will give out much merit at all. Even if you write the most amazing post, you probably wont get merit. Most people don't have any to give either. I think it will end up with almost everyone not advancing and people with lots of merit will probably sell it for money to people. All in all not a good system.
There are many users who are appreciating the good posts by giving the sMerits. But it has been also observed that, people who are starting the topics/threads are getting more sMerits (obviously for quality post) and its hard to get merits for the good quality posts lying in the middle of page/pages.