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The theoretical adequate average merit to earn, in order for merit not to be a ranking barrier for the decent posters, would be roughly of around 1 merit per day. Nevertheless, that is really only achievable by a limited set of people, since currently, people have managed to earn the following amount of merits:
nMerits nUsers
a) [1000++] 9
b) [500..1000) 25
c) [400..500) 23
d) [300..400) 39
e) [200..300) 80
f) [100..200) 287
g) [80..100) 162
h) [60..80) 188
i) [40..60) 440
j) [20..40) 1175
k) [10..20) 4240
l) [5..10) 2923
m) [1..5) 15737
Of course it depends on when each account was created (the more recent the account, the less amount of merits likely) but out of the 25.328 merited people, 463 have managed to earn 100 merits or above. The figure goes down to 176 people making 200 merits or above, and just 96 have earned 300 merits or above (this latter figure is in the merit per day range approximately).
Figures are low, and while some may vouch for lowering the merit requirement per rank, I’d rather increase the merit circulation on the forum (currently in the 3,5K-3,8K/week area), getting more people enrolled in the game both as Senders and Receivers.
Higher ranks are now way more difficult to reach than before, and require quite some effort, time, and differentiation to achieve. It is doable, as seen above, but not easy. It isn’t meant to be easy, but the number of users that are now ranking-up may be running low if the objective of the Merit System was to separate the chaff.
