It makes sense to give people a significant boost if they took the time to get the merits and invest them into banking. Those who complained that they shouldn't have to invest merits were the ones who wanted to put everything into something combat related to get that tiny extra advantage over someone else if they could.
Tldr: 55 banking merits will give you extra 500m per year with 2b/3months investment - for poor players its substantial, for wealthy ones it's shit (as it always has been) - fairly simple. Are 500m extra per year for 55merits worth it to you? If yes then keep them in banking, if no then put them into lolwareness/temp mastery/whateverisbetterforya ... TCB is becoming slightly more awful and its benefit is heading to "could be kind of ignored" territory, unless one has nothing else to invest the cash into...
Yes, it's free money to those who've done squat. What about a boost for those who spent 55 merits on it? Should we just be grateful he hasn't nerfed that? That's the only plus side for people with merits on it.
Whatever happened between the initial analysis and actual dev that made you decide to only fix one side and not the other?
so can the players who have invested max merits into banking get a free merit reset so we get our 55 merits back and just bank like everyone else to gain similar amounts?
Buffing no merits players and not buffing merrits players... so for 270m less profit per year (22.5m per month), we can free up 40 of the 55 merits invested... 5 upgrades in banking instead of 10.