Wow, I already loved Luminara for the pointy sticks guides but that was a great review.
Moving to my not quite as well organized thoughts and experiences regarding the merit system. First, the Objective. I play probably about 15 to 20 hours per week; 2 or 3 hours a night 2 or 3 weeknights plus 4 to 6 hours a day on the weekends (provided my scheduling allows). Since I13 released I have approximately 40 to 50 merits collected on all my characters combined. Thus, I can't really comment on the rewards, largely because I can't afford them.
This leads to the more Subjective part of my response. First, I really like the idea of the merit system. Actually being able to target recipes that I want rather than running endless Katies to get the same crap again and again while hoping for a decent drop is a good thing in my opinion. Second, the downside is, the prices are too high for my playstyle. To outfit my characters within my typical playing time with the IOs that I want I'll have to essentially run a minimum of 2 hours of TFs every night that I'm on for months to outfit even one character.
This leads to the third part of the subjective response. Prior to I13, running the odd TF or SF was fun or in the case of Katie, at least over quickly. Now, with the markets almost dried up, to actually get what I'd want, I need to make TFs my job. I work 40 hours a week at a job that pays me, I don't want to come home and PAY to play a second job. I'd rather team with a few friends than go hunting for open slots on a TF that I've already run far more than I ever want to.
Fourth, what I'd like to see changed. I think that the first thing is at least a 30% reduction in merit reward prices. The other change, which is the one that would make me happiest, is to make every door mission in a story arc worth a minimum of 1 merit to every person on a team that was on long enough to qualify for the end of mission xp reward. This would make doing arcs beneficial to every person in a team and while still not as lucrative as a TF on a per-minute basis, at least it would be a step away from the possibility of endless TF grinding. That change would be nice for villains who have fewer SFs available to them.
