If the merit system gave stars next to a user's name, with visible icons,
It does, in the form of your rank.- Like I said before, VISIBLE ICONS - Like stars for example. Trust me, I don't say this as a random opinion, I say it because I saw ATS during the glory days and used it daily. That system is much better than this for reasons I already listed. The more visible a merit score becomes and the button to add to the merit score, the more people will use it and value its use.
and did NOT cost merit to be given merit, then this might work better.[/b]
It doesn't cost merit. It costs sMerit, whose only purpose is to be given out.- I meant it costs a fixed resource to give someone else merit (basically an upvote). If this is the case the resource pool should be increased for all ranks as many other users have already stated.